Poetry by Stephen Watt

Malvern Star Supermax


He felt safest in his BMX platoon. 

Wheeling past the abandoned power stations
where a pink supermoon
blushed like sugary alcopops,
fizzing and glinting; all stars and spokes.
              Older boys kicked their studs 
off the palladium bricks. Flicked cigs
where the dead bird’s nest
had become drained eggs, bones and waste
and girls thumbed their sister’s leaflets
about procedures in abortion clinics.

Together, they were sheltered from this.

In the outskirt’s forests, fugitive witches 
could freely dance naked 
around the Devil’s pulpit
where bogs of drowned angels 
lashed their limbs from elastic sludge.
But in his tactical unit, brothers in arms,
they could delude, avoid, dodge and ditch
those spooky bitches.
Emerge from those haunted woods 
smelling of his Mum’s hand-washed dishes.

Young team logic. Safety in numbers.

At school, he altered into a ventriloquist,
throwing his voice against walls,
tables and the corridor pictures:
               A bully’s nettle-sting fingers
               bruising his small bird windpipe.
Teachers pledged exams as an exit
but meantime, the bike-shed 
was handlebars and pedals; the vacant smiles
of imaginary friends
poised for another of his adventures.
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Stephen Watt is Dumbarton FC's Poet in Residence and former Makar for the Federation of Writers (Scotland). Stephen has four published collections of poetry, edited two punk poetry collections on behalf of the Joe Strummer Foundation and Buzzcocks, and is one-half of macabre spoken word-music project, Neon Poltergeist.

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