Member-only story
BRYTER LAYTER
Morning rain soaks my clothes, my hair, my skin,
I do not care. I am not there.
I study the mortar between the crumbling bricks
in this old wall built by the calloused hands of men who’d served
on the Somme and who’d been called ‘such dirty scabs’
in 1929 by striking Salford dockers;
they’d hung their heads but they had mouths to feed.
They’d taken any work they could get,
Men carved their initials and the date 1929 on the granite bridge
that took them over to Quaker fields, where kicking a soggy football
helped them to forget their empty bellies, if only for a while.
Now young kids smoke skunk here, the sweet smell is everywhere,
hanging heavy in the air. Their great grandfathers used Laudanum,
that concoction of opium and alcohol, then still rife, despite the law.
There is always resistance, many ways to get out of your head
And to imagine that there could be more. So much fucking more.
