The Comedy And Tragedy Of Street-War. 

 His head reappears from the haze of the bottle-smash
bloodied but unbowed, a local hero.
Alcoholic rages burn, looking for a face to lash;
no-one's uninvolved, it's fingers up to Nero.

 But even if our decadence may rival early Rome
should Rome Convention tell us what to do?
Diving on the ruckus like they left their wits at home
are many who keep their heads above their brew.

 I want to join in, but I shan't.
All the same, I can't just stand there like a bloody yucca plant
so I go to stop an unkind maul,
using my speciality - the Quiet Human Wall.

 "Do you want some?", a man says, and he doesn't mean booze
cos he holds out the bottle with it's base to my face.
"No I do not!", I return, like I tell some bad news.
It is enough: he gives it to the next aspiring hardcase.

 It doesn't seem to matter who is right or who is wrong,
and some, who cannot handle that, go elsewhere,
but those who understand the game jump in and play along;
a lot of fucking effort going nowhere.

 I'm sure that one guy really wants the pain;
his senses and his face a mess, it's all he stands to gain.
He sways there urging, begging to be hit,
pulling on the collar of a man refusing it.

 Then the law comes down, and you should see the shadow-melt
as people fade away, becoming passers-by.
The cops have come, and they have seen, and there are no more collars felt;
they see there is no need of conquest just as well as I.

 Silence blasts a market place now swept and splashed with blood
as we move through grit and grey in high relief,
and as we leave the roof-lights to their sickly salmon flood
the night air takes our voices like a thief.

 I think I ought to put this in a poem,
cos those who fought and even those who said a fight's below 'em
had a hand or boot in shaping tribal lore,
but if we take our time and speak our minds there needn't be a war.