Why Must you Haggle with Beauty?

Why must you haggle with Beauty?
Why must you cover yourself with Ink,
and pierce everywhere?
Why must you try to improve on nature?
Why must you haggle with Beauty?
Is it because of an opinion piece in a newspaper,
written by someone with a face,
only a Mother could love?
Is it wanting to fit in?
Or fear of being arrested by the Fashion Police?

Why must you haggle with Beauty?
asking for more than you already have.
Covering skin with ink,
that is an investment in a regret,
facing infection from needles,
or removing any signs
that you have ever laughed.
Injecting Botox at lunch time,
a weekend nip and tuck,
putting something down to science,
and far more down to luck.

Why must you haggle with Beauty?
Make a bargain with nature,
Look in the sales for something strange,
Why must you haggle with Beauty?
In this society,
Something has to change.

The Village Cricket Team, 1913

Mr Brown remembered them well.
All the fine boys who played Cricket on the Village Green,
in the summer of 1913.
He remembers their youth and vitality,
and their innocence,
in knocking out sixes and sevens,
and winning against the older teams from the local villages.

Mr Brown is alone in holding those memories.
The Cricket Team of 1913 swapped the smack
of leather and willow,
for bullets and blood.
Only three of them came back,
one blind, one crippled,
and the other one is alone in the horrors
He hopes no-one else ever has to see.

The Village saw damage,
and the population decimated.
57 boys went away to defend
their green and pleasant land
from invasion,
and in doing so, broke the hearts
of parents who remembered
being proud that their boy
was a member of the Village Cricket Team
in the innocent summer of 1913.