ON THE SCROUNGE IN THE EURO LOUNGE
(for Mick Standen)
Here in this dreadful Belgian Pub,
we’re drinking
piss-poor booze.
And the Belgian bar-maid’s Belgian Breasts
reach out
for the Dutch Frontier.
Brussels Airport
plastic sprouts
games amongst it all.
Gates and terminals,
dates and walls,
the Business God grins on.
Abroad, in all this shameless wealth,
there’s a deeply shallow stench.
And we poets
drift
in one Stella stream
of rootless alienation.
Yes, it’s us again
declaiming verse
to all the whoring Nations.
Declaring love poems to the skies,
our words are caught
in flight.
Because we’re on the scrounge
in the Euro Lounge.
We’re just gagging for a quid.
We’re upside down in a screwed-up world,
hanging
on these very words.
Yes, we’re on the scrounge
in the Euro Lounge.
We’re searching for the Lost and Found.
Two old romantics
in a place called ‘Frantic’,
last terminal of dead dreams.
On the scrounge
in the Euro Lounge,
among the jewels and fancy gowns.
We’re dancing over the business types,
we’re tripping
over Stars and Stripes.
Yes, we’re poets on the scrounge
in the Euro Lounge,
with only our poems to lose.
Just cadging grants to fund our rants
and red wine to ease
the pain.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
