Memoir
At my parents, Christmas, I looked
for that boy where I no longer exist.
Key still in the yellow backdoor,
smell of wet dog by the fridge,
not knowing where I was til I heard
the orange, Wembley football,
thudding on house, garden wall,
saw kids wrestle one another’s hearts
for a goal scoring chance, climb
their own spines to head a high cross.
Man-o-war masts of smog – gilded
by sodium, torn on aerials – unfurling
the ship’s prow figure-head
of Brenda Scoefield, pedalling into low
definition silhouette, her grimace
set in millstone; handlebar basket
full of mincemeat. A kid on his knees
spine flexing, retrieving the ball
from under a car like a beggar’s dog.
I escaped, died, went to Fazakerely,
leaving behind elbows of mist,
foreheads of salt, spaces for others
to inhabit, a street you cannot leave.
At my parents, Christmas, I looked
for that boy where I no longer exist.
Falling down, getting up, hard to see
for eye-scalding sweat, a shoe flying
overhead, detonated laughter muted
in the sulphurous haze. One-two off
a gate stump, a cheeky nutmeg
by the coal truck, a rolling barrel
of scuffs, charges, kicks and curses
several feet from disturbing the peace
in every directionless riot of travel.
A kettle boils, the acousmatic voice
of the apocalypse, Big Dora, boom-
-clang-squeaking like a boxcar axle
pledging an imminent reckoning
for the price of bacon bones, Five
Woodbines and the Wembley ball’s
thunder-clap on her window pane.
How many of ‘me’ are there?
One, of oak-moss smeared denim,
white milk below the bough’s skin,
swinging on a fraying rope, shaking
stiffness out of branches. One,
of the swishy hips-first walk
and take-the-piss upper-crust drawl
and lisp. One, lying in hiding
on the washhouse, staring
at celestial insect-bites of light.
One, is the brother needing help
with his reading and writing.
My penance is a house of books.
One, of cathode glow, theme tune:
This is Your Life, Till Death Us
Do Part, charge of the clothes props
in the garden. World in Action, that
naked man with the opening credits.
One, of borderless nature’s apples.
What was his name? Stopped cars,
the night train’s one-tone treble,
iron-on-iron, spear-on-shield, faint,
building, louder…as in Zulu,
echoing across the golf links, other
side of the line. Where do they go?
Do they live in another street
after this one. Who calls them in
at night. Do they return as people
who see themselves as absent?
Under a lamppost a couple arm-
in-arm, the girl’s smile-inside,
or is it a runnel of vapour, a tear?
Cold pinching her thighs, ears,
from behind, his small red light,
she checks her stride not knowing
that what she does next as the ball
bounces towards her, will resonate
in the questions she asks the men
she meets, the way she sweeps lint
from her nylon stocking, sitting
cross-legged on a bus, kids playing
up. Walks past a wall with a cane.
At my parents, Christmas, mum
told me: He doesn’t speak to her…
She doesn’t speak to him…neither
of them speak to the one upstairs.
He’s pouring concrete in Australia,
she’s moved in with a fella – he’s
not well, it’s a bugger and ‘Slim’
the decorator’s gone, recalls him
drying his socks on a blow lamp.
Mrs Livesley, harmless enough
swinging her cotton-string mop
cleansing her lamppost out front
all she is into the act, declaiming
into the gums of the wind:
Don’t think ah don’t bloody know
what yah sayin’ ‘t’ other side
of curtains ‘cause ah bloody do.
All that was four decades ago.
The years, trailing one another
like novice spies at first,
then highway robbers, galloping
alongside, getting a grip. People
long gone. One, fathered a child,
got that illness we don’t mention.
One, threw herself under a train,
smiled as she put out the empties.
Some of cancer, of drink, of time
which is a fog-bound street from
another point of view. Actually,
all that was an hour ago.
Can’t see them now for shadows
that self-divide and re-converge,
gaps between the living and dead
we pour through, finding our own
shape, guided by sibilant echoes,
distances, the glimmer of a cheek.
Like lungs of air we cannot hold
on to them for long.
I would run to these kids
playfighting like mountain cubs,
ask them whose side I’m on.
Outnumbered by their own ghosts,
inseparable from sea smoke
out running the wind, oblivious
to the murmured vespers
of other roads, not caring
which side-street of knock-about
they are born or die on, too busy
twisting blood on the ball,
setting fire to their lives
to heed the rat run’s engines
as the centuries begin