Lifted


Rab lifted me up over the turnstile,
My first football game, Celtic and Rangers

Lifted on the wings of a Cessna chipmunk
Air Training Corps and Boys Brigade

Lifted from the ground taken indoors
Could have froze to death on the tenement stairs, eight pints of beer.

Lifted by a shop detective, sirloin steak under my shirt,
Picked up by the police, the peace was disturbed;

No air bags for a working-class lad when he goes off the rails,
he is not raised up but cast down into the abyss

So, at the end of my wits, I took up poetry,
and had a great play on the words.