Untitled the seller’s boy

Who remembers walking down memory lane,
As picturesque as it might seem
Very suitable for a painting or a film
Like that old Havana tree
Leafless with a sense of its breeze
Amongst the branches reading
Something that reminds me of poetry

Who remembers walking down the memory lane,
As something worth regretting
And all that you learn from love
That it’s a symbol
Rather like peace
Out of its place
In juxtaposition

I remember walking down memory lane
An orphan as I may be
As often as I care to believe
Running down to meet my mother
After school, at home time
You can tell the teachers good bye
And they reply
With honesty and sincerity
That you have a lovely day
Knowing fully well that the days nearly over

Who cares to believe in memory lane
As children we care not to keep memories
As we run and play
Knowing how to walk and talk
Never forgetting names and places
Like the park with the lake
The swans, geese and ducks
The dog with three legs
The grandpa playing chess
And you can tell he’s awake
Even though he looks asleep
Because you just do
As you feed them bread
All of the animals in the park
Even the statues caste in stone
Like the gates
All majestic

Who cares to relive the past
He was three and she was four
All sweet and sour
Like the pudding on the stove
Made by a sister that cannot cook
As hard as she might wish
Constantly wishing that she might die
Yet stays up late
To read her book
Not sleeping till all the pages have sunk right down
To shed a tear when things are brown
To illuminate the dark light
That she says she sees
As much sense as that makes to me
It is compelling to find out
That she sees the night during the day
Leads me to wonder
Leads me to stray
To wonder whether she sleeps at night
Or whether that’s like day
Because the moon
Shines and sways
By the window
To us it is beautiful
But what ever we like
She opposes
Happiness and fun
Despair and glum
As simple as that
That factor worked out
She climbs to the rooftop
To get a better view of the ground
But as we all know
Common sense must prevail
And the best view of the ground
Is surly concrete bound

To forget such things are what memories are for
A contrast in contradiction
Explaining what cannot be explained
Not withholding the simple care
That that little boy is still with us
So do not even dare
To gossip
Such travesty
To make idle
Things that are precious
To some an all
Like the bone and marrow
May mean science to us
But hers saved mine and thine
So with such things in mind
We wine and dine
That our sisters died in vain
To save the heart and save the brain
To accomplish nothing
And become routine

I remember the arms we had
That helped us along
Grateful for the exchanges
Of clothes and cake
Of food that was properly baked
Mixed with nothing but honesty
And humble pie, with a hint of mint sauce
And we walked in fields of gold
I was five and you were six
I, a mother’s son,
Like never before
Gazing now at the night sky
In my eyes a death spurned once more
No hope but of kindness
Understanding the matter
Of the trip
You had wires into your bones
And now you needed me

I was obsolete and I was wise
I learnt from my sister
To stay in one place
Because you might not like you
But others did
I learnt from mother
Who said you always grew faster then I did
To appreciate life
Whatever it may be
It is nothing more then a piece of cake
A piece of clothe, a piece of coin
A piece of love, a piece of sharing
Empathy and ever enduring
And I sat on her grave
Crying like I do
Remembering the orchards
Of apple trees and leaves
The apple I have in my hand
When I ran and fell
Then got up and became brave
And found you wiping your tears
As I came in
Hiding something from me
Instead of telling me straight
That father died during the war
Because someone told him to go
That someone sat on a bench far away
In London perhaps
And told me father to go murder
People, for the better of all
And when he refused to kill the people
The people killed him

I was nine and you were ten
In bed by eight
And hoping and stirring in my heart
That everyone could care less
Like I did deep down
But in hospital
You fought hard and white coats did you proud
A miracle in the snow
We could run perhaps
Once again
Across the farmyard
In the midst of spring
A new year
Hardly daunting
I wasn’t sad
And I don’t know why people around me died
I was never bad
I was a good child
Everyone said so
And I thought so to
As I helped you out of your wheelchair
And pushed you on the swing
And the wind in your hair
And you wished you could run
I said nothing
But I thought instead
That you were running
All you had to do was close your eyes
And feel the wind
Don’t patronize the power of imagination
See the fields falling under the skin
See the blood seeping through
See why mother says not go into the field with no shoes on
And watch in dismay
As you open your eyes
That all is not well
I gave my marrow and
I gave my blood
But as the tree falls down
Late summer the next year
You are still in your wheel chair
God is cruel sometimes
If you believe in him
I believe in him
Because you do
Although I can’t see why
God would listen to you
With your hands clasped together
When he avoids looking at the state of your legs

I remember coming back from college,
Deciding not to go to university
I can’t live up to the hype
And going into the kitchen
With you crying
And she wasn’t even your mother
She was nothing but your nurse
She was mine
And she left me
And she left me for good
Not to go shopping
Not to go on holiday
Not even to runaway
But to the worst place you can imagine
But as the tears grew, breaking through rough terrain
Building with pleasure that no one wants
I thanked her
For not killing her self for me
For not dying for someone else
For not being extreme or different
For not being idle gossip
For dying because she was sick
Because I was coming to tell you
That I would stay at home
Not study and play
But I can’t do that
I remember thinking exactly that
I would live up to the hype
I thought as I went outdoors to cry some place else
Reaching for my new tree, so far away across the field
Breathing in deep, because that helps you see
I picked up the pace, because the tears were coming quickly
They were fast and thick
I begun running for solstice
For peace, love and deprivation
I began running for love in the hope that at least you wouldn’t leave
I didn’t stop at the heart felt tree, it wasn’t the same
The words on the tree were never-fading, there was a lesson to be learnt from that
There was a lesson to be learnt from everything
From the stars above guiding me insane
From the oranges falling down
From the cages that wraps the animals at the zoo
I ran tired now for no particular reason
For no particular reason at all

Why do people walk down memory lane
When so much of it is worth regretting
For everything there is something opposing it
It can’t exist without the other
Up and down, above and below
You and me
As I returned nearly forty years later
An invalid as you are
Were still unmarried
You said nothing to my newly shaved face
But you touched my face
You made nothing of my cologne
Yet you took in a whiff of my skin
You heard little noise about me
And here you stood up, not sitting on me fathers handmade chariot
Recollecting the times when you were in a wheel chair
A miracle of your time
Surviving everything that was thrown in your wake
And as it happened I came at exactly the right time
Like clockwork you might say

I went down the corridor to the cupboard labelled memoirs
And spoke about it to a poet, who approached me on the street
For no apparent reason
Asking about my life
Offering me tea in return
And so I spoke
Throwing the gauntlet down
Challenging God
And the words spoke blue and white
A common favourite
I was to live like a beggar
Through my own choice
That much was true
There are opposites
And death is pretty much a deathly opposite
To the greatest miracle of all
Life itself
And to ponder it in dismay was a waste of it
And to waste it away like I did was cardinal sin
And to live in hope was not wrong
And God does not come into that equation
It is ours and ours alone
And now we step outside
And relive those days again
As old fools we might be
Not able to run anymore
Past the stump of old
Past the fields that were of barley now
Past the second tree in full bloom
In the summers eve
Reaching for a new tree
A third chapter in our life
This was by another tree
By a lake
A little girl sat on its branches
We never approached her
She was from the neighbouring town
As delicate as a leaf

I remember that night
When death was not a case for regret or upsetting one self
When you died of old age
You always grew faster then me
And the last few things you said changed me
Into a new man
The words being “I asked god, I prayed to god
Even if it’s the last thing I ever do please return to me what I have lost
Return me the seller’s boy,
And now I’m upset with him
Because it really is the last few days of my life
I can feel it in my bones
The bones with your blood
The body with your sister’s bones
The body looked after by your mother
The chair I sat in for half a century made by your father
And the mind, the one incomplete without you
She said as we made our way across the man made lake
Turning poetry into narrative, narrative into motion
In the boat made by the father, of the sellers boy
The last thing he ever did, before going away
And like that the night passed,
Death passed me another ironic and unwanted gift
Two deaths instead of one
I had tortured my self on too many nights
To pass this one
On a boat made for two

And now much later the poet speaks in my tongue
In the shape of a memory
And who cares to go down memory lane
If not theirs
The answer lies under the shade of the third tree
Hoping when drawing their last breath
Not arguing for once, on this issue anyway
That god exists
And hoping by all means
That at least their memory lives on.