My name is Percy Adam Lovell
I am at work on the ship canal
I rise at dawn to the ring of a bell
and us Latchford boys
for a long time have toiled
The earth is black on the flat of my spade
incisions cut through its wet body splayed
and I can feel every sever I've made
falling back
through a lifetime of soil
as I tear at a bedsheet of sod
I feel my eyes grow bleary and hot
and I dust grit from the glittering rod
a fistful of emeralds
and freshwater pearls
I wrap it well in a rust soiled tarp
I feel it rage through me in the bath
it moves to mute my cavernous laugh
and harden me
with an unearthly glow
now all the pain has flown from me
I rob Gram Galt of his famed silver teeth
I wear the town round my neck like a wreath
The sceptre of potency
There's a pressure in me wells
a force the sceptre cannot expel
it's in my ribs this suffering swells
and I can't speak
and I can't siphon off
It has been, love, such a long while
since all the lilacs withered and died
and I feel froze as our lad softly cries
fat and soft
does he feed at your breast
I feel the sceptre splitting from me
and in our boy it has burrowed its teeth
now in the glass of the emeralds I see
a hundred men
pinned to the tree
in bloody agony
the sceptre of potency
Father please be still
my synapses are firing
such lightning through my skull
has blackened all my wiring
Did we just fossilise?
Crusting? Gone before our time?
It's becoming clear
this ward you won't be leaving
the rod across my lap
will sap the balm of grieving
I want to feel my nerves spark
This cursed crab shell's gone dark
The sceptre of potency
snaps with a screech
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