living poems: some new and alll original work

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.