CAN OF PAINT

I would love my children 
To know

What it was like to work

As a boy

I grew up at eleven

And loved it

The job and the first

Two pounds wages

Upstairs in a music shop

With a speaker on the window

For all the town to hear

Black Velvet Band

Was huge that Summer

And all the days were hot

I did errands and the tinker

In me revelled

Going off to the hardware

For a can of paint

And there I was

The cat that got the cream

Crossing Eyre Square

In sunshine

And out of the blue

I collapsed black out cold

Opening my astonished eyes

To a crowd of grown ups

Looking down

But worst of all

The can had leaked

And I ran with it

The boss roared

You bloody eejit

Never thinking to ask

How or why the leak

And I never thinking

To explain