You broke my collarbone, dislocated my thumb, chipped my tooth, had me hanging on the back of garbage trucks, stamping on the hands of a violinist, sleeping in phone booths, train stations, bundles of rope on harbour walls, waking on the steps of homosexuals carrying poodles, stealing canal boats, swimming through freezing rat shit, wailing in a Holborn prison cell, waking in beds with tattooed Russians.  You had me carrying a dwarf on my back, dropping him headfirst onto the pavement, blood and dwarf tears, kicking down doors, fighting pickpockets, throwing bottles off rooftops, chasing sirens and puking into bloodied palms. Shivering in the morning, red acid on my brain and black fear in my soul. But it is not what goes into man that is evil, but what comes out.  And only you were there under the pier in winter, when fair weather friends locked their doors and dwarfs clawed at my face.  And we laughed with Boscombe tramps, held the hands of tender prostitutes, paid for a widow’s taxi home.  You numbed the broken bones and helped forget the cold. You helped me roll the dice, and I have paid a heavy price but I will drink you still, and will heed your wisdom and ever strive to be ’strong, refreshing and different’. Amen.

Penzance at night, sickly lamposts, the dock inn, hunched seagulls, broken bottles of rum, blood and cigarette butts on granite, the black sea.  voices singing from long rock beach, devilish silhouettes dance around the light of a fire.  Closer along the cold howling beach, to find drunken men wearing baseball caps, dancing around burning driftwood, their torsos smudged with patriotic tattoos, 3 lions, teardrops and doves. With bloodshot eyes and lips tight round cans of K cider,  they dance and sing fiercely into the flames, until the moon dissolved into the sea, where something moves in the water.

A mermaid watches from the shallows, she has travelled far, drawn by the songs of the hooligans.  But alas, her curiosity and the ebbing tide have brought her too close to the shore.  The men are ready.  Her mercury tail flaps helplessly as they drag her onto the sand by her golden hair.  She lies helpless, as they dance around their catch, alabaster breasts soon drenched in cider and urine.  They huddle naked, grunting as they take turns.  The mermaid yelps like a seal cub.  Who is she calling for? Her helpless father, the sea king, who could command the Kraken to her rescue? Or the treacherous sirens to tempt the men to their deaths? Or the Narwhales to bare her away on their ivory tusks?  None can hear her now. Drifting away into the darkness of the beach, all is lost to the sound of the sea.

The morning sun drenches the beach in a red glow.  Smoke rises from the embers, the men lie passed out amongst seaweed and driftwood. Floating face down in a rock pool by the shoreline, amongst, seaweed, empty cans and oil, is the limp, silver-white body of the mermaid, swaying like a flower, whiter than the surf.  

Look up for a vapour trail somewhere over the Atlantic -that’s probably her.