an exercise in memory in three parts
1.
To seek out,
to remember,
to be somewhere home,
through a half-called past’s
muggy fugue,
a muddied memory mumbles
and walks the talk-
my mind blindly tumbles
on tentative, spindly,
five-year-olds legs
to childhood tenement life…
the outside loo-
it’s broken door
the flushed out
routine stench
of strangers shit.
Down sunken, petted lips
of worn-out stairs
to the gloom-soaked
close foot, badly lit
where,
scuffing up my snotty nose
seeps the foreboding must
of a dead cobblers shop-
where,
mice families scuttle in soot
and are shelved with leather
off-cuts, bent nails and sleeping lasts,
and where,
recalling in dust-speckled light
a succession of tails can be seen
in the half-light, switching
along our flaking pelmet,
windscreen-wiping away
snug notions of safety.
My young mum
eeks a dance, battering the brush.
Erratic thumps, curtain rustles,
dancing feet and screams.
Thumping, squeaking, scuttling, screams.
Shake, rattle and roll.
Big Ape Diary 