A Small Act Of Defiance. Poem by Miki Byrne

The overalls were blue. Washed to faded shadows
like pieces of captured sky.
They fell into folds worn into their own memory.
The boots were hard. Toe-tecting bulbous humps
that crouched upon his feet-like pigs noses
with mud and diesel layered thick upon them.
Souvenirs of demolition sites. Stomped over
through unrelenting days of graft.
His shirt was sometimes frayed.
Laundered to a threadbare softness.
His hands showed his trade in the contour lines of grease
that circled his knuckles and defied soap and bristle.
Yellow stains of nicotine wrapped fingers
used to crooking round a snooker cue
and the smell of Brylcream would waft from his thick hair.
Always kept military neat.
He would sometimes feel dark and twisted.
Plagued by flashbacks and thoughts of the bayonet
kept under the pillow. He would often be hung-over.
Dying for a lunch-time pint to resurrect the euphoria
of last night's skin-full. Some days he would be bored
with mooching round the yard. Waiting at the foreman's will
for work to be allocated. Knowing but never saying,
that the Irish were given last and that ‘paddy'
was a label he loathed. He and ‘da boys' would trade
tall tales and Woodbines.
Yet, the dickie-bow was always in place.
Rakish, incongruous. The colour of red roses.
It sat beneath his stubbled chin and shone like a beacon
across the dull wasteland of the site.
His proud ‘up yours' to the world
and to all the gobshites he hated within it.