Solo
For once, I felt wanted, dead or alive,
the day my fame outgrew the Famous Five.
There came a time I could give no more
to the other guys in the Gang of Four
and I felt the dead weight fall from me
when I unyoked the clowns of the Crucial Three.
I considered all this as I boarded the bus
to quit the town not big enough for both of us.
One eye didn’t seem so much to leave behind
as I sped to my job in the kingdom of the blind.
Copyright Credit: Roddy Lumsden, “Solo” from Mischief Night: New and Selected Poems, 2004. Reprinted with the permission of Bloodaxe Books Ltd., www.bloodaxebooks.com.
Source: Mischief Night (Bloodaxe Books, 2004)