The Shield

Yield!

Yield!

Yelled the knight as my shield

Fell to the ground with a clatter.

I lay there defeated and treated myself

To the sweetest belief that it just didn’t matter.

If I won or I lost

What was the cost?

I had nothing to give but my life.

Why hold up pride?

Why hide under guilt?

Why struggle with Destiny’s knife?

But before I could give up

I smiled,

Chose to live up to my proud reputation

As brave.

With a sword at my neck

My last reckless act

Was to ask how I could be saved.

The knight looked at me, laughed and said,

"Few stretch this moment beyond yes or no,

life or death

But you still stand up as you lie down to rest

And deserve to find out how you are so blessed.

You’re an arrogant wanker but you fight a good fight

And this night is yours and you’ve won

If you can show me in the wink of an eye

How to reflect the Moon as the Moon reflects the Sun.

And then it seems I dreamed of now,

Of here in this sacred space,

A place in my heart,

My start and my end,

My friend, my land,

A land of angels,

A land of anger.

Perhaps my head had been cut off and now was floating high looking down at my body,

This land whose soul I never saw

And so I soared over this scepticked isle

From the delicate chalk white lace curtain cliffs that have been shat on by blue birds for so many years

To the red barrel rolling belly laughing curvaceous bawdy borders of bloated Britain.

Heaven or hell, I couldn’t tell

But this was home, my kingdom.

And as I drew back the curtains between me and myself

A tempest of chaos began

And I fell with the rain as the angels’ refrains

Mixed with the moans of a people in pain.

I saw semi-detached souls

Split into their angry and apathetic halves,

Dissected under televisual anaesthetic.

And while something inside grew restless

Staring wide-eyed at our own inhumanity,

The will to act was pathetic.

I dripped down into these stagnant backwaters of boredom

Sprawling out over a gently rolling jumble of grumbles,

Pleasantries and weary conformity,

The same old story

Spread out over a tamed landscape

And doled out by tired communities as shallow as an advertising slogan.

Just do it.

This is it.

This is home.

And as I become drizzle on a suburban pavement

I am given my earthly quest

To find a land of hope and glory behind the fences of the mundane.

Well hope was instant

Because back in Festive Road

The children were playing

At pirates and rogues and seamonsters,

Princes, princesses and kings

And all kinds of fun and fantastical things

And fences were nothing to adventurous kids with no lids on their imaginations.

And while nations fought nations over borders and walls,

To us there was no fence too tall to hold in our joy.

Let’s gather the frogs from seventeen gardens

And build them a home in a pond.

I’ll be the Black Knight and you’ll be the White,

I’ll be Bodie or Doyle or James Bond.

Just jump over, don’t mind Mrs. Dover,

She’s just a grumpy old cow.

I’ll keep you covered while you get the ball.

Peoww! Peoww! Peoww!

And sometimes the best games were ones that were naughty,

Sneakily making a dangerous sortie onto enemy turf,

Oh what mirth, to prove your worth in the garden of a dragon, pushing boundaries to the max, or scrambling down the bank to railway tracks,

Where monstrous machines came steaming, screaming past,

Heading for the future, leaving us the past.

There lay hope.

I knew I’d come from somewhere,

I knew I’d go elsewhere.

Even when you’re nowhere,

There lies hope.

But where would I go?

And where was glory?

In excelcis deo, apparently, wherever that was.

But I couldn’t see it in this land,

Things had changed in ways unplanned.

Playing games was no longer enough.

People were talking about feelings and stuff,

And if we wanted a future we’d have to make it for ourselves.

To be sure there was no future in England’s Dreaming

We held a Jubilee to mark the death of England’s Glory.

We cried as we set up the final street party

And Scott of the Antarctic fought bravely for my attention on the telly.

"Heroic failures, the lot of us," we said, closing our doors.

"Bullshit! Bullshit! It’s all bullshit,"

I heard the battle cry

But I couldn’t join the rebellion.

You know why?

I’d left my shield in a previous world,

The shield that divides the bullshit from the truth,

In this life my youth would be without that shield.

So did I yield?

You’d better believe it.

‘Cos I did. And I died.

I believed everything. And I was tried.