Addle Brains

Addle Brains

A Tuesday night in Winter, holed up in the city of ravens,

The owls in the hills hoo-hooing and eyeing off the field mice down in the cold grey centre,

Addle Brains lining up with the dead for the soup spoon,

Addle Brains and the legions of the passed for the bread bag,

Ladle the soup, pass the rolls,

Addle Brains and the many not here and loose souls.

One might fly off to the blank heavens and the lead high halls,

O the hungry sky aches for blokes without folks and bulges with the bearers of palls.

Addle Brains would drink for four days and no eats,

and sleep in the glens of botanical parks, and on the humped bus shelter seats,

Where it's cold, where it's cold.

One morning I woke up in a room in the nation's heart,

and couldn't think for the life of me what I was doing, or where to start,

or what rehearsal was required, I was so sad and tired.

What does a bird want with money?

Was he made this way?

Do you have to earn the right to find all of this funny?

Nothing's funny today.

Addle Brains mixes his powders with his fateful blues,

and the wide-eyed bubs of the Parliament couldn't give a hoot, or even two.

All it takes, it takes, is a kind look and a word, a word,

Some pretty eyes and skin, from your fine family you were given to win,

and spill it over into the basin of common sin,

just a drop, a drop of the stuff that makes us kin

- Addle Brains perching way out on a limb.