Thanks, Patrick. Doug, I take your point and have had another crack at it.
Cracker night at Crouch’s (2)
Crowded with lego pieces and meccano whatsits,
Crouch’s kitchen bristled with red and yellow.
Waxed Home Pride bread wrapping added orange
Jamie leaned over the laminex table, wheezing.
From somewhere under the house an engine burbled.
Jamie’s mother could be heard pottering, somewhere else.
Let’s go outside, I suggested.
Hunks of fibreglass and metal
landmined the unmowed backyard
Footwear was essential. No back fence
to mark off the yard from the lane behind.
The very place for Guy Fawkes Night -
Jumping Jacks popping on cracked concrete,
the cordite stench of exploded penny bungers,
eyes hauling into night sky tracking skyrockets
launched from a brown beer bottle or lead pipe
by Jamie’s older brother, Peter, obeying the directive to
‘Ignite the blue touch-paper and retire.’
The bedrock bonfire blazed and sputtered,
fed by garden trimmings and grey fence palings.
Sparkler-lit words hung in the air while thoughts fizzed.
A Catherine Wheel, nailed to the garage door,
shed coloured sparks as it twirled and spat,
leaving things not-quite-dark when it finished.
Stringy, grey-white wicks linked our
rippling green and red cracker keyboards.
Jamie, bolting back from the detonation zone,
lost a thong and never broke stride, landing
back in it with his next still-running step.
He stood, heaving, in his oversized hand-me-down shorts.
The yard a week later still bore cracker detritus,
remains of red print on damaged white paper,
door scorch-marks, broken glass.
Jamie plodded back to his Lego bricks.
Started snivelling again.
Mrs Crouch somewhere inside.
bw
12.3.20
Bill
On Thu, 12 Mar 2020 at 3:06 am, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> A finely tuned memory, Bill, but it only really takes off in stanza 3.
> With active verbs showing us the event. But all the ‘was’s, all the
> passive voice in the first 2. Can you find a way to actively ‘see’ that
> kitchen &year, who does so?
>
> Doug
>
> > On Mar 10, 2020, at 2:48 PM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> >
> > Cracker Night at Crouch’s
> >
> >
> > Access to the Crouch kitchen was via concrete steps in the backyard.
> >
> > The kitchen was full of Lego pieces.
> >
> > Not just clickable yellow and red, also windows, chimneys.
> >
> > Jamie Crouch constructed buildings on the laminex table.
> >
> > Jamie’s black-bearded father was seldom seen.
> >
> > His mother was home but not in the kitchen.
> >
> >
> > The house was made of white bricks.
> >
> > Burbling boat engines revved in the garage under the house.
> >
> > The unmowed backyard was full of hunks of fibreglass and metal.
> >
> > Footwear was always required.
> >
> > No back fence marked off the yard from the lane behind.
> >
> > The very place for Guy Fawkes Night -
> >
> >
> > Jumping Jacks popping on cracked concrete,
> >
> > the cordite stench of exploded penny bungers,
> >
> > eyes hauling into night sky tracking skyrockets
> >
> > launched from a brown beer bottle or lead pipe
> >
> > by Jamie’s older brother, Peter, obeying the directive to
> >
> > ‘Ignite the blue touch-paper and retire.’
> >
> >
> > The bedrock bonfire blazed and sputtered,
> >
> > fed by garden trimmings and grey fence palings.
> >
> > Sparkler-lit words hung in the air while thoughts fizzed.
> >
> > A Catherine Wheel, nailed to the garage door,
> >
> > shed coloured sparks as it twirled and spat,
> >
> > leaving things not-quite-dark when it finished.
> >
> >
> > Stringy, grey-white wicks linked our
> >
> > rippling green and red cracker keyboards.
> >
> > Jamie, bolting back from the detonation zone,
> >
> > lost a thong and never broke stride, landing
> >
> > back in it with his next still-running step.
> >
> > He stood, heaving, in his oversized hand-me-down shorts.
> >
> >
> > The yard a week later still bore cracker detritus,
> >
> > remains of red print on damaged white paper.
> >
> > Jamie plodded back to his Lego bricks.
> >
> > Why did he snivel so much?
> >
> > More engine noise below, door scorch-marks,
> >
> > Mrs Crouch somewhere inside.
> >
> >
> > bw
> >
> > ########################################################################
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>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
> https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
> Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations
> 2 (UofAPress).
> Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
> Listen. If (UofAPress):
>
>
> Done in by creation itself.
>
> I mean the gods. Not us. Well us too.
> The gods moved into books. Who wrote the books?
> We wrote the books. In whose dream, then are we dreaming?
>
> Robert Kroetsch
>
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