Squatting squalid in the bed-sit

Spitting and dribbling,

A step-down from Ascot

And betting your bottom dollar

With nothing left but debt

For last month’s rent

Hoping someone else might pay.

 

Littered with leftovers

Half-eaten, uneaten,

Leftovers of a life of choices

Saddened by loss

Riddled with guilt

Consumed by anger

As though it were someone else’s fault.

 

Chocolate éclairs and Guiness

Fattened the liver into nothing,

Sausage and vodka

Sizzled it into fibre

Until the tumour took over

With alpha-foeto-protein [1]

And someone else was hurt.

                                                                                               

Memory stalks Streatham High Street

With the old man strutting

Past the skating rink

Going round and round in circles

Until the great fall

Where you’re left to pick yourself up

Looking for someone else’s hand.

 

As the hurts of the years

Spew out in venom

From a scarred face and a broken nose

In the helplessness of despair

A daughter’s care overflows

When she might have left disgusted

Like another someone else.

 

November 2009

 

 

 

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