Francis Bennion - Poetry - Poemotions

You're aware, vicious boy, while glancing elsewhere,
you're aware you've got something on me:
you with your innocent look,
flashing eyes bright like an angel,
peach skin shaped round that hook.

When sure, vicious boy, I was looking elsewhere,
though sure I was still on your hook,
you sniggered in black disgrace
as, with the back of your grimy hand,
you smeared that angel face.

Angelic maybe, but at last I can see
what lies behind that look:
dirty and crude, silly and rude,
unreconstructed, uninstructed,
the devil still unsubdued.

I've woken up now, do you hear vicious boy?
Do you hear what I'm saying to you?
Compared to me you are nothing as yet,
and I have escaped your spell.
It's time you started paying your debt.

Paying your debt, paying your debt:
that is what you must do, vicious boy.
None of us have the right
to sail along as you do through life
without learning to pay that debt.

Start of page 206 in the book

The Doubtful Charm of Pubescent Boys

For me, a mature man, some pubescent boys have charm.
What, his Honour the Judge asks, does that statement mean exactly?
Bowing low to his Honour's judicial sternness, I say I only wish I knew.

I would very sincerely like to find out
just what it does mean
when I say some pubescent boys for me have charm.

It seems an unlikely tale
that I, a mature man,
should take any of these youthful aspirants so seriously.

So what do I do to find out why I do so take them?
Well I do what anyone in that suspected position would do
when wishing to suss this one out.

I resort of course to the dictionary
to find out what the savants hold
that it means when you say all that about the dear young male creatures.

Charm, says the OED, the very best dictionary,
is any quality, attribute, trait or feature
that exerts a fascinating or attractive influence.

Well I could have told them that before we started.
It takes me no further into the tulgy wood
- as if any dictionary could.

So I'm back on my own, your Honour,
doing the best I can to answer from my own limited resources
your Honour's pertinent question.

I can only say
that I did not give these boys their charm
let alone wish them any harm.

Start of page 207 in the book

I suspect I am receiving from their naive transmitter
a plaint, crude complaint,
and responding in the only way open to me.

If I had to put it in words I would say
their complaint is something to do
with their budding sexuality being universally ignored.

Start of page 208 in the book

Redeem the Past

O please don't piss in the bidet.
Do shift those coals from your bath, dear Wayne.
If you still think you'll shave your youthful skull
do take a look at your brain.

Then ask yourself what am I seeing
when I gaze at myself in the glass?
Need that moron be quite so moronic?
Could he not take a tag from the past?

Don't walk into church with your hat on,
or advertise crap without pay.
Wake up to the truth of exploiting:
your teeshirt is a giveaway.

When I was your age we were splendid,
so why not look back my dear Wayne?
Escape your peers, strike out, redeem the past:
let only the best be your aim.

The best, what is that? you shout, swearing
as you join all your mates down the pub.
Good, better, best what's all that? cries the lout:
they never educated us that.