Colin.

He was a member of the National Front.
He marched in Nottingham in 1982.
He hated pakis, niggers, polacks,
Jamaicans, jews - he even hated
Scotsmen, Welshmen, and Irishmen.

He had a large and ugly skull,
dented like the bonnet of a poorly made
British car;
his jaw was simian and his head was bald
as a brass monkey's eye.

He wore Doc Martens, boot-cut dungarees,
a white tee-shirt, and a denim jacket
with a flaming eagle on its left side
to disguise the vacancy below his breast.

His name was Colin - not a typical
racist's name, I hear you muse.
He loved his father, he told himself.
He secretly wanted him dead;
he secretly wanted to sexually mutilate him.

He went home one day to have eggs and ham
when he saw he'd burnt his toast.
He didn't mind burnt toast, mind.
He sat down in his living room
and purred like a dead cat filtering through leaves.

He got on the blower to his mates.
All of them were busy doing ought,
so he just sat there and looked out
to grey streets and a grey sky,
and trees kind of pining for better air.

All of a sudden, his sister called him.
'I'm coming 'round,' she said.
'I want you to meet me new feller.'
At 2.33 pm, there was a rapping on the door.
He answered it, to be met by a
big, black fellow wearing a smile
and his sister beside him grinning.

'Hiya, Colin! Well, don't just stand there:
give your big sister a hug!'
They entered, and Colin went all black
as if he'd seen a ghost
or he'd been eating soot out of a sock.

They sat down. The man rested his hand on her leg.
'Guess what, babe: I'm pregnant.'
'That's brilliant, sis...' Colin said with bilious trepidation.
'We been goin' out fah a time, now, ya see.
I hear ya quite the little trouble maker, ay?'
Colin twisted out a smile that seemed to screech
from his maggot pit.
'Yeah. I am.'
'Well,' the man said, 'we'll see what we can do about dat!'

With that, the man rested his arm on Colin
and gave him a brotherly shake.
There were gonna be black babies running around!
There were gonna be white babies somewhere else!
There were gonna be coffee-coloured babies!
They would swim like the injustice
'plied by plantation owners upon the council estate.
They would share his blood,
and share the blood of the world.

A heavy boot settled on Colin's head.
His temple was left like a mole hill;
the recess had risen like a bubble of spit
and he slowly realised that his little black demons
had finally got him.
His little white angels laughed.
The pakis in chorus laughed.
The polacks laughed through their poverty.

And Colin suddenly started with a tiny laugh
as his small eyes rested singularly, unchangingly
on the small, pale dream of bigotry
that seemed embedded dead
in the invisible niche of the wall.