A great Sunday morning poet double header, earlier Paul Mortimer's winsome, sentimental paean to all that Amy Winehouse left behind and now Wayne Dean-Richards' The Cleaner, and altogether unwholesome exposition of what is fucking wrong with this land where we live like it's an eternal embodiment of the Stanford Prison Experiment. the cleaner comes from Wayne's collection, 'It's A Mad World But Funny...' (Outsideleft Booklets)
the cleaner
I was the cleaner.
nobody knew my name except the boss
and the boss was never there.
“he’s the cleaner,” everybody said.
and as if to prove them right
I’d clean.
I didn’t speak much,
just got on with cleaning.
till this one guy
grabbed me by the wrist
and tried to throw me
into the shower room
with the showers on.
I’d been cleaning the changing room.
the guy and his pals
had been playing competitive sport
but obviously not enough.
I suppose he was showing off,
thought his mates
would think it was funny if he threw
the cleaner into the shower
and got him all wet.
but the guy got it wrong:
it’s a mistake to think
because a man’s quiet
he’s benign
or weak.
the guy who grabbed me was all smiles till
he saw his mistake.
one punch all it took.
none of his pals said a word,
as I got on with the cleaning.
© Wayne Dean-Richards
Essential Information
The 18 poems comprising Wayne Dean-Richards' IT'S A MAD WORLD BUT FUNNY series are listed below. Outsideleft published them all throughout 2023 and 2024. A free downloadable PDF and a limited edition A6 Outsideleft Booklet (for neither profit or loss) is available now we are at the end.
Buy A Mad World But Funny from our new otherwise quite empty shop here
Download a PDF version for free here
It's A Mad World But Funny (complete)
- a father's advice to a son being interviewed to work on the Coventry Ring Road - 1958
- a shopping list and Lowry
- alone
- big dog training
- buying boxer shorts in next
- lanyard life
- melancholy
- snowman
- this house
- fight in an art gallery
- you cunts
- road rage
- different face
- Dostoyevsky didn't have to put up with this
- the cleaner
- bailout
- glue
- are you