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Bender (1984) The Sunday Morning Poet

Bender (1984)

The Sunday Morning Poet

by Jay Lewis, Reviews Editor
first published: May, 2023

approximate reading time: minutes

Outsideleft's Sunday Morning Poet eases you into the end of your weekend

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The Sunday Morning Poet is our new weekly poetry ghetto designed depending on your sensibility to smooth or jar your way into your Sunday. Today in the poem Bender by Jay Lewis, the last day of school echoes down the years...

 

BENDER (1984)

Some of the flour bombs
Hit their targets

Most exploded
In the road.

Colin laughed
When his blazer got hit

'Well, I'm never fucking wearing that again" he said.

Over the bridge
The boys from the Bottom class

Made a flotilla of warships
In the river.

Torn up exercise books
An inky mess in brown water.

A vital cleansing.
Of unwanted words

You caught me
On the Sports ground

An abandoned land
No place to hide

Above us
swallows soared

Around each other
Swooping like fighter planes

Your signatured shirt,
And Cinzano Bianco

Stolen fags from your dad,
This was the last day, after all.

Above the din
Of the bombs and bombast,

Your parting words
Shot through me.

Without question
You screamed treason

Your informants told you
I was now part of the enemy

So this forever,
My field of failure

My White Flag, My Surrender, Ignored
And you, my assassin

It was just an act of war.

 

© Jay Lewis, 2023

 


Essential Information
Bender by Jay Lewis
Jay Lewis will join Black Country authors and poets RM Francis, Kerry Hadley-Pryce and Wayne Dean-Richards at the Outsideleft Night Out on Wednesday June 7th, and the Bearwood Book Shop. Free advanced tickets are recommended available here⇒

Jay Lewis
Reviews Editor

Jay Lewis is a Birmingham based poet. He's also a music, movie and arts obsessive. Jay's encyclopedic knowledge of 80s/90s Arts films is a debt to his embedded status in the Triangle Arts Centre trenches back then.


about Jay Lewis »»

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