The Mentor by Jonathan Butcher

You pontificate slightly outside our circle,

the cigarette paper hanging from your 

bottom lip, comparing music studios

to apple factories; formulation to cowardice.

You quote your master, the only one you attach

any modicum of mutual respect to,

as you dismiss our interventions

to the contrary. 

A crossed word of wisdom, which always

accompanied a frown, a frustration 

at sentiment lost over time. 

Your lessons preached like faded scripture,

but with a congregation who would actually

practice your quatrains, even if they

slightly missed the original point.

And across flats and bedsits, amongst 

comfortable squalor, the peeling of paint jobs 

and floor boards creating a downpour

of flakes etched with a past worth drinking 

over, to clink glasses of clouded glass

together, a delayed celebration 

over the fact that you were always right. 

Jonathan Butcher has had poems appear in various print and online publications including, The Morning Star, Mad Swirl, Drunk Monkeys, The Abyss, Cajun Mutt Press and others. His fourth chapbook, 'Turpentine' was published by Alien Buddha Press.

He is also the editor of online poetry journal Fixator Press.