Chivs86 Poetry - Xmas Eve in the Drunk Tank

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Xmas Eve in the Drunk Tank

T'was Christmas Eve in the drunk tank.
Facing up to the consequence
of all that I done drank.
From what started out
as a silly dumb prank,
became
a night and a day,
with my head sunk in shame.

As I sat starving,
thirsty and depraved.
Beaten up and bruised
by the screws in a scrape.
Locked up in a cage,
a squalid place with stains.
Like what a way
to ruin a perfect holiday.

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Inmate,
I'm not saying its cool,
of course it ain't.
It weren't funny
how they saw me urinate,
in the street/
Put me on the floor and pulled away.
By my legs,
as the pavement tore at my face.

And captured me faint,
With no thoughts to complaints,
that I might make.
Oh how I wish
I never caught that plane.
Or In the first place
I never even came to Ukraine.
Had stayed back home safe in the U.k

Where doing this sort of things OK.
In the sense at least
that I woudn't of get beaten.
Up, by the police.
For such a stupid, minor thing.

So next trip, my decision is
I'll be better off kept put.

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Original Idea/ Inspiration.

The story behind this poem 'Xmas Eve in the Drunk Tank', well of how I came up with concept anyway is a funny one. I was over my mothers place and on the side was a piece of paper with this poems title and it was a concept that stuck out, because recently before I had read an article about the dangers of football fans at Euro 2012, getting drunk and arrested.

The title was according to my mother a line out of the song 'Fairytale of New York' by 'the Pogues'. I wasn't really aware of this when I wrote the poem and I mean It didn't really make any difference at all, I'd finished it before I knew but, I suppose I would still have to count it as the inspiration. The subject matter though on the other hand; i'd have to it's about police brutality to a foreign tourist who they find drunk. Maybe a bit of an over exaggeration of what things are really like but, none the less, worthy of the content I was looking for.