WALKOUT 2 , VICTIMS
too soon,
two young,
too sure,
two wrong:
too bad.
A third or fourth bed-sitter jumble in six months:
who’s counting?
Anticipation and eruptive fear
vibrates from every piece of furniture
and an ultra-static storm threatens
the frayed carpets and the ragged nerves
Cinematically: a serene domestic scene
of Hardy stillness and simplicity;
A girlish wife really does knit
some motherly thing;
and me, no older, not reading a text book.
In the only other room (or cupboard)
a sleeping baby
ignorantly waits to be awakened.
And he is: the film, freeze framed,
restarts at keystone silent speed
with stereophonic sound:
a demonic farce with screams and screeches,
pent-up abusing, ordered panic,
blows, breakages and bloodless inner bruising.
The familiar end is retreat and flight:
unwillingly an adult, self justified as victim,
I slam the door again.
The bitter private chaos
shouts accusing in the silent public street.
Walking to nowhere, striding towards nothing,
just away;
away, with delusions of escape,
away, without an aim
away from the faded,
never fading eruptionthat has grotesquely murdered nearly everything,
again.
My thoughts promise to allow no journey back.
But I’ll be there – as regular as breakfast.
The image and the real all sweetly normal,
yet secretly counting the whispered seconds
until the nightmare fevers out
again.
History will see this as unreal,
memory as irrelevant
and the future just as junk.