John Bevan

There’s a strand of string stuck to the fast-spinning blade on the ceiling of the Dutch beer-house down Deptford High Street,

it’s stretched in the slipstream and follows a forethought and forenamed pathway while the blade keeps out dry heat.

This strand of blue string swirls about, unswerving, flapping flat and rabbit-tame as, maybe, it dares

to wish that the laws of the world could fulfil dreams of rash reckless wrecking, all Einstein-might-care.

The blade swirls about like a fighting-tool, spins fiendishly, never falters or halts in its chopping

lest the string should straggle, stroll straight in its own stride or think of the thirst-quenching outcomes of dropping.

John Bevan Esquire, who had squeezed through life squatting in squalor, sits and stares at his lager and sooner

or later he sees bubbles break forth, build a broad bulwark and skate over the skirt of the schooner.

Some fling to the rim skimming bunched in packed pockets, other bubbles break free and flee to the middle.

They all crash and burst bleakly on the beer’s edge in the throng of six thousand thousand thousand little

followers in death. Bevan sighs, shrugs, swigs down his lager, sidles his eyes up to the ceiling,

sees a strand of blue string in a blur of a blade. Now Bevan will long link that sight to the feeling

which wishes the laws of the world could fulfil dreams of rash reckless wrecking, all Einstein-might-care.

Mind stuck to that fast-spinning blade now, he thinks of the thirst-quenching outcomes of the day when he’ll dare.