The Potency Of Cheap Music

Forty five years ago I was a teenager
on reduced pocket money who propped up
the divisions my parents kept between them,
submerged in my mother's life, as her helper.
The only interest I could laid any claim to,
as mine alone was popular music in it's several forms,

the national pop music station
was the cheapest, all it required
a lot of time, and mine was cheap.

Then there was the thirty minutes
a week when T.O.T.P. was on television.

But music I could buy and play
by myself meant more to me.
This is where the local grocer came in.
For years they had a box to the right
of the wooden payment counter
that was regularly refilled
with ex-jukebox singles sold at my kind of price.

The grocers must have looked at me a lot
as I looked through the contents of the box
much more than other people did, combined,
as I slowly chose which single to buy that week.

Fast forward to small town life in Ulster,
far away from where I grew up.
Music  is still my major interest, only now
I find music made from the 60s to the 90s,
randomly on CD. I use it to learn about
music I was never exposed to in the past.

As an adult I remain the expert in cheapness
that I was apprenticed into as a child.
Unlike then, I no longer watch television.
Music scores over television every time.