Street Song

Step on a line
you marry the devil –
no longer to savour
the candyfloss of grace –
instead
the check-list of sins,
first confession
an easy choice
between murder and omission,
the craving
to beard the bogeyman,
loosely imprisoned
in an upstairs room,
the curious
keyhole of mascara,
the too-loose clip
of his mother’s shoes
and in the corner
a wireless
playing all the best tunes.

The seventh son of a seventh son, Maurice Devitt was abandoned by his evil stepmother and raised in the forest by a poet.