HIT MAN

Another revised poem. Thanks again to The Secret Poets for their invaluable assistance. You can read the last version here.

Hit Man

He sleeps inside your memory until

someone mentions labyrinth or Minotaur

and asks what was the name of that bloke

The one with the thread and sword?

We tend to forget how keen was the edge,

his primary problem solving strategy.

I wonder if he’d not been better off staying in that cave,

missed out on the mixed reviews

that followed from him ditching the woman

who’d given him the string and sword.

Pimped her out to Apollo

and high tailed it back to Athens,

those black sails prompting his father’s suicide

and his son’s swift ascension to the top.

Yes, he’d rather we forgot the messy details

and just remember him for that first hit.

When I showed the poem to the Secrets there was some confusion over what a wet job was [Mafia jargon for a murder]. As I always want a poem to be accessible all the abstruse slang had to go. 

Here's Horslips. They were a great live band though I only saw them once.

And here they are from 1976.

Until next time.