My hometown was rough
because teddy boys and mods and rockers
off the cargo ships from Glasgow and the docks
and slums of England rocked the streets
and knocked the local toughs
out silly with their knuckledusters.
They also slashed them with their razors and their chains.
Yeah, but my friends and I had a revolver
when we were kids
and we used to try and shoot out streetlights
on dark and stormy nights.
We missed, but we could have shot
those boaties close up for all their street frights and
all their ****** peccadilloes like ******* local girls
and leaving a league of nations in their wake.
We didn't pull the trigger there,
but they shouldn’t have got away with snickering
among themselves that they could
pull girls’ knickers down when they wanted,
and scare us with their their flick knives.
We let them get away with thinking
we were easy pickings
in that small town where I was born.
But it’s just as well, really.
I'm glad we didn't take their lives.  

Mike T Minehan

I met a ****** today,
and no, she didn’t actually tell me.
She kept this tight and was
really shy and polite about it.
But I guessed, because, well,
she's passionate, and trembling on the brink,
like a strung bow, quivering to release,
and she's straining to please her father,
who has the highest standards,
and the rest of her family, who have the highest standards,
and she has the highest standards,
and she's trying to live up to these highest standards,
and her Khmer culture is conservative,
also with these highest moral standards.
Gee. There are so many high standards here,
except for politics and the ****** of protestors
in this country. They're a high standard of
retribution and execution, in the back of the head.
Yeah, culture can be cruel sometimes,
especially in Cambodia.
Anyway, this girl’s trying to keep it together
and, well, there’s so much I could teach her.
But, look. I’m not the one to give her advice,
or to point my finger, or anything else, here.
It’s called the journey of life.
She has to figure it out and fit in for herself, see?
But wow. She's really beautiful in this innocent way.
So maybe you'll forgive me, briefly,
when I think of toxophily, improperly,
not to mention other recreational activity.
But honestly, I like and respect her,
and I appreciate her integrity.
Although I wish that everyone
would just wish her to be happy
instead of all of this responsibility and respectability
stuff about morality and virginity.
And for those who try to keep her in purgatory,
well, I wonder about their own purity. Yeah.
Just a few thoughts on equality
or maybe jealousy or hypocrisy here.
But hey! She's twenty-two! It's her time to be free.
She can still have *** and be pure.
It's called love, see? Not necessarily matrimony.
And anyway, virginity's not for a committee,
this is her own destiny.
Love is the answer.
It's really simple. See?

Mike T Minehan

No, no, I haven’t been doing this myself,
but I live in Cambodia,
and 2 guys and a girl were deported recently
for riding around on a motorbike in the ****
in broad daylight. Actually, you see,
naively or deliberately,
they rode right past a police station.
Now that must have been a sight for sore eyes.
So the police set out in hot pursuit,
rubbing their sore eyes, or whatever they rub,
maybe their truncheons, eh?
And when the perps were pulled over,
the cops didn’t fall about with hilarity
when these riders said quite calmly
that they were going to pick up their laundry.
Truly! They were backpackers! As if that explained it.
But publicly, the cops said nope,
these perps are obscene to be seen like this
and they violate Khmer customs and culture.
The cops even took pictures of this outrageous obscenity.
Indeed. The riders' rapture of being bare assed
and naked and **** free is not for Cambodia.
Certainly not at this juncture.
So their capture resulted in them being deported,
never to show hide nor hair in the country again.
Just goes to show...
But you can get away with ****** here,
particularly shooting union leaders or critics or protestors,
or you can throw a grenade into the opposition,
and **** a few right there. Those killers go free.
It's probably dangerous to speak openly,
but I don't think these guys read poetry.
They're probably busy oiling their artillery,
and even rocket launchers, as the PM
threatened to use against the opposition recently.
Seriously.
They're on the lookout for dissenters here.
Oh yes. And bare *****. Obviously.
So watch you **** in Cambodia,
especially if it's bare on a bike.
And ssshhh! Watch out for your mouth.
You need to cover your mouth up properly, too.

Mike T Minehan

So. You lit up our world
like the trajectory of a blazing comet
and landed in the middle of our lives,
plonk. Just like that.
We’re talking here of a little supernova,
and a whole, dazzling, new dimension.
Yes, you were smiling, crying,
shamelessly dependent and incandescent,
lighting up the world with love,
while saying, in effect,
don’t worry, I’m the future now,
what isn’t written yet is here with me.
Well, you didn’t actually say those words,
because you’re only ten months old,
but that’s the essence, really,
of your arrival in the terrestrial
and your trajectory from the stars.

Mike T Minehan

I can’t help thinking
that almost every girl I meet
could possibly, potentially be,
yes, a screamer in the sack,
or better, a soul mate in the sack,
or even a confidant in a coffee shop, or anywhere.
And then they could jointly rule my kingdom
imperiously, like the Queen of Babylon,
or maybe Bathsheba, who was having a bath
when David espied her and then jumped her in his boudoir.
I suppose an exhibitionist needs a ******.
Gee. But it wasn't kosher for David, the King of Judea,
to then have murdered Bathsheba's husband, Uriah,
so he could afterwards marry her.
What? Yeah, this is all in that whodunnit,
the first tabloid, the Old Testament.
But look, I'm getting away from the path here.
What I'm talking about is girls that I innocently meet
without trying to get them in closer.
I don't spy on girls in the bath or the shower
and I don't have anyone murdered for *** or for power.
Or for anything! I'm a writer, see?
I simply imagine, inside my head,
that we all fall fabulously in love,
and blow our minds instead.

Mike T Minehan

Substantial reward
paid for the following lost items:
sense of endless time,
boundless ambition,
athletic body,
presumed omniscience,
undimmed enthusiasm
and blind optimism.
Former owner wants to
restore original self
and has not yet lost hope.

Mike T Minehan

The loved ones I watched die
taught me about acceptance
and transcendence and most of all,
love. This was even though I was
deep in the abyss after they died,
but I realized later that this abyss
is where I learned the lessons
about living. Without the abyss,
and their gift of love,
I could never have known this.
You see, the power of their love
was the light towards which
I climbed out of the darkness.
Their death was a beginning
and a giving. This was the process
of passing their light on to me,
and theirs is the light that guides me now.
This incandescence is a sustenance
that glows with the golden strength
of giant, gentle suns.
It's mighty. And magnificent. And humbling,
because now I know that
love is the light that lives forever.

Mike T Minehan