AN EVENING AT THE RITZ BALLROOM BRIGHOUSE WITH THE JOE LOSS ORCHESTRA
We arrived early by coach
instruments were ferreted into shabby backstage rooms
yesterday's polystyrene cups unwashed
lay near their current newspaper
gutted somewhere near page three
another ballroom another town
Brighouse
the jewel in the crown
abdicating from the future
locked in a blistered past.
our presence with music was part of that,
a ritual
a rite of passage
but the Ritz could wait.
We explored the canal, three of us
swapped stories
honed in offstage moments
of seasoned suffering, cynical cadences
refined by grimness.
The warehouses hunched blind
and straight - backed,
gritted their tenement teeth
looked down as we posed by a lock,
the tired old day reflecting,
being carried away.
Another evening another town
heat and noise
primal surges of pre - destined dancing ensued
and as we had done our duty
once more joined the motorway
at its most wretched.
raypool
Tue 17th Nov 2015 12:04
Thanks Stu. Poetry gives a certain freedom to condemn life in the raw, but one has to earn a living. Music is not always about groupies and adulation, although that obviously would help!!
A good larruping is I guess a slang word, but one of the threatened species which I think should be drawn out on its creaking plinth as a reminder that the world is more than only what our "protectors" want us to hear.
Mr Grumpy.