PRIVATE LIFE
The private life drama, baby, count me out
- The Pretenders
When your father died you became
lighter by the five stone his cancer had
left. A bonfire of letters
curling over a semi-detached home
into the nothing it partitions;
opportunity's stomping ground
a quagmire of washing-line, mower, concrete
blocks stacked against the shed
where he smoked over porno. You enjoy
an aunt's belated accolades. Choice.
Then that perennial second cousin, Monday, pulls up;
an orphanage's despair fertilises the firs
bordering 'your' property. Spirited as
a discharged patient, you
skip the rest of the story, lifting
off from your 'home' town.You were born
on a rocky ridge pocked by quarries -
there's no perspective
emptier; understanding was the gap
between cerulean and cobalt. Your tennis clothes sweat
gently as this morning lifts you
clean off the earth. Recreation becomes
penance and paradise is a glass of pear nectar.
Words are no longer of this moment
itself, but your experience of it
self, which is beyond comprehension:
'It is vanity to desire anything
that is past. The misery afterwards
was, of course,
a luxury.'
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