REDRUM by Lewis Wyn Davies

"It's terribly sad for the horse." Eddie O’Leary, racing manager for Gigginstown, 

owners of Gold Dancer, put down after winning a race at Aintree Festival.

As I write this poem they play music

from slapstick comedy sketches:

strings of idiocy, trumpets of failure.

How many wake up in the morning

and hear chimpanzees screaming?

I get it. Tickets to Coventry are the worst

value in the entire land and I'm tempted 

to betray my internal compass to boycott.

My hands have been drenched

with enough horse tranquilliser to see 

off the winning steed at Aintree.

I've danced on Instagram for scraps

of copper, nickel and costume gold. 

I don't know my egg custard's origin.

Plastic crackles in my kitchen wastebin.

I sleep at night by reining in my support

for football tops stitched with bad 

business, only clicking on articles

about fence falls and neck breaks

hidden under pinsticker wallcharts

and news on where your horse ended.

_________________

Lewis Wyn Davies is a Welsh writer living in Shropshire, England. His words have been published inside magazines and journals including London Grip, Poetry Wales and Culture Matters, while he's also appeared in anthologies with Broken Sleep Books and Sunday Mornings at the River.