If they didn’t have incubators in 61
If mammy hadn’t chased the nuns
If Oswald couldn’t fire a gun
Mail lai might never burn
If Ferdinand wasn’t vain
No anzac slaughter
Or those black dogs
If Hitler got a serious wound in the first
Would crystal nacht no happen
No secret pacts in Warsaw
The Zionists now deny
Showers would just wash
Ovens just bake bread
No Jewish dead
Olive trees in Palestine still
If my trike was never nicked
If I took that knife to school
If joan never punched a lassie in the face
If I never threw that stone
That scared your upper lip
If uncle Charlie hadn’t died
Or Cousin tottie didn’t stumble
No winter of discontent
No vote of no confidence
Would Thatcher close the mines
Simon Weston wouldn’t suffer
On the Gallahad
Lockerbie just a place
Yvonne Fletcher just a granny
No job in microfilm
John Lennon never shot
Would they make another album
No headteacher Agnes Allen
Who worked in Bletchley park
And smoked those small cigars
No sneaking Matt McGinn
Or Connolly’s last supper
No miss Geig I miss her still
Mice and Men, Orwell or Joseph Heller
Hamlet no wild mountain thyme
No Dave Hayman’s lady Macbeth
No teenage angst
No acne
Betamax would still be here
No Maxwell stealing pensions
And floating in the sea
No BCCI scandal
The bank of crooks and criminals
No black monday 1987
And the £150 billion loss
The public counts the cost
Never again they said
No boom and bust!
From those we trust
But they never shut the gate
It happened again in
Asia 97
Russia 98
Again for us in blighty in year of 08!
If I never killed the hamster
If my knee didnt snap
Could we now cure cancer?
The sun never spread its poison
The gates unlocked in Hillsborough
Zebrugge never sink
Millie Dowler just teen
Who gets to live her dreams
No jihadi mad men
Highjacking a religion
If hadn’t crashed my metro
My next car not get nicked?!
Would I have to suffer cats
Return to the forbidden planet
Or Tim burton’s sweeney Todd!
If I never read Tressell
Would the north sea have more cod
Me a six pack bod
would cubism still seem odd?
If I never joined the entrists
Sold the paper
Got the t shirt
Would David Kelly never die
They call it suicide
There might be no halbjah gassing
That Thatcher would deny
Her duplicity
No super gun
Farzhad barzoff
Betrayed by u.k interests
No Michael tighe!
No campaign against Stalker
If stayed out of the Scotia
Would that helicopter not have fell
On the Clutha bar
Mcgarrigle not be gone
Survivors carry scars
Of that fateful night
That haunts me still
If hadn’t tied up paddy
Stuck him in wardrobe
Threw away the key
Would my parents still be with me
And never gotten Ill
Roul might have resisted that wee urge
To kill
If I never tasted chocolate
Didn’t lose my hair
Was nicer to my knees
Would the world no be In crisis
With covid number nineteen
And the death of bees
If I said those prayers to jesus
Like my youthful self had done
Would it stop a dunblane madman
Killing school kids with his gun?
If I hadn’t drunk the poitìn
On that new years night
Would we not be swimming in a sewage Of poison and Alt right
If I hadn’t kicked in that front door
Would you still be there
Lying on that fetid floor
Starving and abused
No one to take your hand
Free you from despair
I didn’t want to be that guy
But thank god that I was there
If I hadn’t spoken to you
My life would never change
I never took your number
All those moments I would miss
The happy and the sad ones
If we had never kissed
I’m looking back beyond this now
These moments shape me
Too many to detect
Many scars and Joy’s reflect
The butterfly effect
Jim Mcsharry 1/8/2020 (c)
Be creative art is for all 