Jen loves life. She smiles a lot.
In every grey annoying moth
She sees a future butterfly,
And life in all she passes by.

Kids on bikes go round and round,
Making their 'I break things' sound,
About to break a window with
A stone they throw, a direct hit.

She loves the sound. She likes to think
That all the local teens will drink
To leave the glass for kids to break.
A symphony of sound they'll make.

They go to bed before it's late.
Skinheads live for love, not hate.
They're really only Buddhist monks.
The town's most famous maddest drunks

Are merely high on life's sweet scent.
They all could be the new Clark Kent,
A change of clothes away from being
A Boeing man who's floating, fleeing,

Flying through the evening sky.
It's not an alcoholic high.
Far above electric wires,
Their engines run on inner fires.

The litter is confused confetti
From the day when Al and Betty
Said 'I do' and wore the rings
And said 'no way' to pointless flings.

The heated arguments on streets
Are just debates on Yeats or Keats.
They act out scenes from Ulysses,
And fight about their favourite cheese.

The gun acquired by some known gang
Will just release a scroll with 'Bang',
Like a small dog's sudden bark,
With an exclamation mark.

And gangs will meet in their tree house.
They'll have a cat or dog called 'Mouse'.
They dress as cowboys, Indians and
As pirates sick of life on land.

Evil can be swamped by good
Within a head beneath a hood.
Hidden teens are made to flower
By country walks and nature's power,

And vandals led to right their wrongs
By men in sandals singing songs
About the joy of holding hands
And taking life-enhancing stands

Against the joys of doing more
Than dancing on a well-lit floor
And holding hands with who you've dated.
The other thing is over-rated.

The city's crime is just a fad.
The criminals aren't half as bad
As those exposed by Nancy Drew,
But sometimes Jen's rose-tinted view

Falters when she looks at Steve.
Her mind's cheerleaders always leave.
If they were real he'd have some line
To make them knee him in the groin.

He swears a lot and wears a sneer
That frightens birds and distant deer.
He'll be a bore with tales about
The things he put inside his mouth.

He's not her knight in shining armour,
Defending her from what would harm her.
He says he's up for any fight.
In truth he'd hide or run in fright.

He's a rapper, so he claims.
He says his rhymes are oral flames.
But Flipper's sounds were more like rap
Than those from Steven's oral tap.

Water flows, not words on fire.
He spits a lot. He'll quickly tire.
He'll turn the tap off for a rest.
Without his cap he'll feel undressed.

Without his clothes he'll never feel
He's somehow failed to keep it real.
He'll often feel a need to lose
His clothes while full of foreign booze.

He's never full for very long.
The tap will sing its liquid song,
Evacuating what he drinks.
It's better than his rap, she thinks.

She admits sometimes it seems
He's not the boyfriend of her dreams.
And in her dreams at night she sees
Great white sharks and killer bees.

She wonders are these scenes a sign
Telling her to un-entwine
Her future fate from that of Steve.
To put it simply: she should leave.

But other times she's in no doubt
A butterfly is breaking out.
She sees it in the smile he tries
His best to hide, and when he cries.

And she'll be there to help him through
The painless birth of someone new.
He'll leave his moth-like clothes behind
And let her decorate his mind.

'The Tree and the Horse' is a novel by Arthur Cronin. It's available in paperback or as an ebook. Click here to read the first two chapters. Click here to buy the book.