Mikey Paige

I wrote this poem about a friend of my Dads, based on the story he told me about him.

Mikey Paige had a funny grin,
a row of crooked tiger teeth, black
with tar and the deprivation of
hard Belfast childhoods.
Standing on the heath, skinny arms
raised to the sky, crying the freedom
of the wearin' of the green
Mikey declared himself the King
Of Ireland...
While down below in Ulster, his
best work to date exploded into
a thousand fiery messages of
a challenge accepted and met.
They let Mikey out of the scrubs
Twenty years later, his debt paid in full.
The heath was unchanged, but they tell me
that Mikey's grin was gone....
toothless tiger tamed by the Gardia zoo.