Church Youth Group Holiday

[heslopian]

beneath the peaks of Switzerland,
inside a youth hostel,
we played chess and cake eating games,
while I cleverly avoided showers
and dreamed about the Scottish sect,
who strolled around with their shirts off,
flexing muscles and playing football.
energetic twenty-somethings, ripe with vigour,
how I prayed that one of them
might be a pederast,
with a longing for young flesh
like mine.

staring down a sheer cliff face,
that day when they took us up one of those peaks,
I shivered more than a camel in the night,
as desert winds lash its body.
but I soon conquered that vertigo,
as the adults looked on with incredulity
("I bet he made it up, poor lad;
he's never been right in the head...")

all this time we wore our Navy blue clothes,
with the golden anchor stitched over one breast,
and trudged in our trainers down thin gravel roads,
towards small chocolate shops and big swimming pools.

in my pocket was a trove of gray francs,
and using my one word: "merci,"
I bought sweets and fizzy drinks,
a tiny red purse with white cross for my Nan,
teaspoon for my dad
and beer glass for his wife.
later he'd complain that I'd given him
the cheaper gift.

I'm aware that I'm just listing things -
mountains, shopping trips and walks -
but even the Swiss could not relieve
my mordant ennui,
cuckoo clocks and chocolates or no.

the central pleasure I derived
was from observing those taut Scottish men,
flexing in the sun,
wearing only shorts,
their faces course and pitted,
skin like parchment
and rounded buttocks.