Have a shave they said. <br />I didn’t know how, so just before bed <br />Dad had to do it. <br />Only thirteen. Bless. <br /> <br />Then, <br />I sat with my music on the coach. <br />Travelled for hours past the flowers. <br />To the middle of nowhere. <br /> <br />But with the lads. <br />We all sat by the fire with heated spikes in our eyes. <br />Transfixed. <br />We made bombs. Baked bean cans full of kerosene lined up <br />in the grass like they were being judged for a fight. <br />Glistening in the torchlight. <br />String fuses like hair. <br />Boom! <br />We didn’t lose our hands, but we nearly did. Off came the last lid. <br />Boom! <br />Boys will be boys. <br /> <br />Then we got the petrol can and someone threw it on the bonfire. <br />It sailed through the air onto the orange nightmare like a crashing plane. <br />We let the dragon breathe onto brown leaves and kindling. <br />It lit up our tiny faces. Ecstatic teeth. <br /> <br />We sat around another kind of light. The one-legged kid <br />didn’t have to worry about his remain anymore. <br />Torchlight again, hanging on a cord. <br />Then we talked about women’s vaginas. Ghost stories occasionally. <br />Torch resting under the teller’s chin. Magazines. <br /> <br />There were no adults at the camp. <br />We blew them and their rules up. <br />Would’ve done. If they were there. <br />We didn’t care <br />about the security cameras which couldn’t take a swing at us. <br /> <br />I awoke to a strange morning. That feeling. <br />And when the sun pushed its way up through the English cloud <br />and we saw it dancing on a far away ground, <br />morning cold lapping at our tongues and eyelids, <br />we went into town. <br />We traipsed through the forests. Hiked. <br />The dew licked us. Tripped us up. <br /> <br />When, over the green hills, we saw <br />the bright stone and cement of an urban world, <br />we all went to buy lighters.<br /><br />Martyn Speed<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/rubbed-two-sticks-together/
