'I've resurrected the voice of John Lennon', he said
to the audition panel in Liverpool
(at which Simon snorted, Sharon turned red,
and Louis rolled eyes at this shambling fool).
He's forty, maybe forty-five:
long way from the Reaper's scythe
but only a flicker from behind his specs
gives the slightest impression he's still alive.
'John will do the chorus line,
I've brought him back through space and time.'
He then proceeded to press play and
sing in nasal whine.

The panel balked, the panel sighed, and
folks at home laughed till they cried
but I was overcome with sorrow
welling up inside.
Because he wrote this song himself
regardless of his mental health.
The words were lovely, fine and sad:
he'd been left on the shelf.

I saw it then:  he'd lost it all.
Apprenticed out when he left school
till Maggie sent the dockyard south.
He lost his job, and lost his spouse.
She probly left him for a fella with a Ford Capri and
a studio in Toxteth with a balcony,
so he's living on his own with arthritic cats and
a poster of Lennon and an old TV.
He didn't go to look for fame,
to top the charts, to win the game.
He didn't go to kiss the screen.
He went there to be seen.
 
Did he recover from his fall
when shooed from that audition hall?
Did he weep in his apartment over cheese on toast
before the two-bar heater and his dead mum's ghost?
Is it entertainment to watch folks spill out their dreams?
By subscribing, we're complicit - if you see what I mean.