They only came for the bar football

They only came for the bar football

The jukebox was always broken

Played Stand by me on repeat

Nobody threw clay pots

Except on a Sunday

When they had bar snacks

Delivered from the chicken shop

With an extra-large jar of coleslaw on the side

Sausage rolls from Greggs the bakers

Pickles from the grocers

Three card brag was a favourite

Of the young guns

Too mean to go into town

They waited for a through bus

To stop outside

Ran out and pulled somebody off

For the hell of it

They sat at the old card table with the wobbly leg

Folded up a beermat to hold it steady

Which were always second hand,

Stolen from the big club

Next to the Catholic Church

They played bingo after the service,

To raise money for the roof,

The barman kept the mats

Tied together with a rubber band

Nobody went in there by chance

Everyone was a regular

But not always a regular guy

None of them was the apple of anyone's eye

Too many had nobody special to go home to

Some had no home

Squatted on an old mate’s floor

Made a living digging holes

To get out of

Nobody sat at the corner stool

It was reserved for the local poet

He had been missing lately

Looking for his muse

She was a very nice gal apparently

Nobody had ever seen her but him

And the gist of it was that she didn’t exist

Just his way of making excuses

For being a drunk

Without any money

Bumming a drink or a cigarette

For a Hallmark verse

A birthday wish

Or a Valentine couplet

They were always a double-edged sword

As the last line was always a killer

Or worse

Nobody came up smelling of roses

But he said that was the chance you took

When working with an artist

Everything was more than what it was

Or less than it had seemed

Depending on the angle

Of incidence

He was only reflecting the ambiguity

Of life

For a poor man who struggled

To say the right thing

To his one and only

Which may or may not be his wife

But she would always be brighter

Than the grey-faced dimwits

Who spent their time doing shit

In the Colliery Inn every day of the week

Waiting on a poet

Who rarely showed up sober

As he had another seat in The Travellers Rest

On the other corner

Opposite the bus depot

Two or three streets over

And a couple of rungs

Further up the ladder

The jukebox played

‘Stairway to Heaven’

And ‘You’re so Vain’

He always thought

Those songs were about him.