davidgoulding84@interpoems.com

WALKOUT 1, AT 16, A DREAMER

A second storey flat and all asleep,

   walls with echos smothered by emulsion,

the comatose box chunky, grey and dead;

   and books and music have no appetite.

I pace the cosy cell, restless and dull.

From the manufactured darkness of the room

the real night holds no terrors, but invites.

The front and only door is flat and shut,

and I bounce down the concrete council         stairs;

indecent in descent, waking no-one:

   so anxious to have the act of going gone.

The quick long walk behind me all the way

   has no answer: out might as well be in

with two miles of night-tricked semis:

   their radiances are just watts and amps to me.

My diffidence is nearly touched by

   the urban woods, and with tired relief

I enter. Precious light is diffused on muted paths

   between steel trunks with cauliflower tops

      that open onto jigsaw scraps of sky,

where a full moon has murdered timid stars.

This well-illusioned boy stops in his tracks

   and reads himself all wrong – or maybe not-

as enchanted, and mature, and self-contained.

An introspective moment, a cold suck of air,

   a turn, and he’s propelled back down the hill;

sixteen but six: a flying superman, arrowed to the point,

   straight-lined: a swift return to restless comfort:

     to the ashamed but craved and craven company

so romantically he had just tried to leave.