squeeeeeeezing my way
down this slimy tube no
doubt about it it needs
no lube happening so
fast voices I hear two
of them I’ve heard
before the rest I
do not know I
figured that
the way to
be was
just go
with
the

f
e
a
r
f
u
l

f
l
o
w

a
n
d

t
h
e
n

errrrrrgggghhh

I’M OUT!
and what a change I feel
so cold it is and dryer than
the place I’ve been for months
all scrunched up with
water-wizened skin
and wonder

PAUSE

now they're sending me to school
what on earth for
it doesn't make sense
I just want to dream
haven't got time to appease
the teaching machine
end of term reports
always say the same thing:
"Out of the windowpane he stares
the boy's an escapist
doesn't care about the
things which count"
(like one-two buckle my screw)
better than being a rapist
is what I boldly say
unlike them who strip kidz
souls then leave a hole
into which every kind of crap
which fits into the gap
can find a home
so I became an absconder
which is another word
for escapist who does it
with his body not his mind

PAUSE

some years then passed
I walked the aisle
no one saw I didn't smile
office work humiliates
still stared out of windowpanes
at forty-two (well wouldn't you?)
always settled for second best
lousy heart pains in my chest
gave me some escape from drudge
on the ward they thinned my blood
you've had a narrow escape they said
(I didn't care)
prescribed more bed
a prisoner of the sheets I was
bed sores old before my time
gracelessly retired to find
bow out engraved upon my mind
All my life has ever been
is one escape act scene on scene
I took to writing clever verse
specialised in trailing rhyme
it took my mind beyond the clouds
escape route used up borrowed time

PAUSE

now I'm in a box again I say again because
it's kind of something like the slimy tube
I started with down which I funnelled
to this world some would say to
which we're hurled on my
gravestone words were
cut "Here lies a bloke
who slit his wrists
the final curtain
on his act
he was a
true

e
s
c
a
p
e

a
r
t
i
s
t"