Down brokeback alley

In the concrete valley near a neon bardo

Where couples in tandem, oblivious passed together in tow

And within their mouldered rooms men fornicate in woe

Right next to the piano store

Where a shadowed man sleeps before the door

Behind him stands a grand piano

Money for which, he could never know

In the mind of the man

He’s the Star of his own show

To witness his span

beneath house of fraser lights

Between and before the next street fight

O, but when he plays those notes his eyes alight

As his woes scurry far from sight

Amidst his rendition, everything could appear quite alright, just quite alright

Stung by the rain he’s spared the shame

His notes are the solemn score

Before each boarded up department store

As his art in uncertainty

Hangs in the balance

Condemned in certainty

I wonder, in mirth, does he?

Curse the street and run afar

But this is home

Where the neon weds with tar

As he plays with guitar upon his jacket

To fund his cigarette packets

Smoked and discarded as the cycles restarted – all before the break of morn

Children feel the texture of shuttered shop windows

‘Round the corner where stray teens score their blow

From a man only visible to those in the know

Click clack goes the cameras

Of brick a brack clad fashionistas scoring their greaser’s jackets

From their homes where there’s even a charge for carbon dioxide

Tourists inhaling monoxide

As they hitch a lift, a trip, an escape, they call a ride

From brokeback alley

Where birds collide with trams

And every citizen is fashioning their exit plans

Hinchcliffe’s acquired his Sunday best

So the weekdays get their rest

He lights a joint in a monochrome square

And caresses his diminishing strands of hair

Summoning up a mild smile

Humphrey Bogart style

Now a lone cat lurches from the wall to where he is sat

To the domain of Hinchcliffe’s lap

Seeking shelter between coat and cap

He strokes the creature and eyes his double feature 

In the magazine of yesteryear

Preserved freshly by a lone man come near

And back down the streets of shadowed lanes

Where Brokeback alley sings its refrains

Upon the wall, signed by an urban restorer

Keith Haring weds with pandora

Fords pass by – people meet

A mere backdrop – upon the street

Art for advertisement – a view to lament

Where canvas is concrete and a frame is cement

Where the festering finch calls

And is frozen as a mural

Before it even falls

Upon the streets of the alley

See the lines of street preacher folly

Behind a smile which at once appears jolly

Lays an intent to scar the brain

Syphoned out through pious refrain

His words like rain, wash to the drain

He says ‘You could be saved’

It only takes a meagre toll

To rectify the rue in your soul

But by the time you’re in too deep

It’s too late to see you’ve been played

Now come the preachers from the sludge they wade

And from your cadaver they shall reap

Cyclical rebirth

Those born in Brokeback’s mirth

The child went to school

They never learnt to read or write

Yet are learned in addictions rule

Taking delight in the nicotine fuelled eroding tool

Between the alleys where

Information men, when asked about

Where tourists should unload

Simply turn and point towards

The nearest exit road

Pints of kerosene are fresh to gleam

Where Carling taps are deemed a ream

Fuel for the poets to strike one another

Where an enemy’s face takes the form of your brother

All is undone when beer comes in

And out goes Mr reason with a hobbled shin

A brawl between all where none could win

Save for the poets who sonnets are writ

And to their bedrooms they now flit

To the comfort of a notebook

So far removed from a Coleridge brook

Where poems become tallies 

And morn greets the spine of Brokeback’s yawning alleys

A man who came from china

Plays out notes to silence

Come from a country where friendship is currency

I wonder did he, expect such ambivalent violence

Spared even the courtesy

None care for the song

Amidst the fuzz of brokeback alley

There’s a gallery of faces, looming out to the cold

Caricatures, lonesome, whose stories have been Sold

off to those out of town

Who’d charge you for a sign of a frown

Selling off steam as gold

Or so I have been told

I’ve seen no sign of money, no urbanised dummy

Only cats and dogs which prowl between the boulevard

Far from the idle suns of a millionaire’s vineyard

Who once handed me a card

I asked was it a joke

He merely smiled and said to me

‘Such a simple thought from you idle folk’

His slime shimmered brightly

From the corner of his mouth

And I approached lightly

Ensuring he went south

To the road that leads outward

Away from this foul town

He drove afar without a frown

And promptly left the land of Brokeback alley.