common soldier

The common soldier

Once motherland I remember well often with a patina

of unbecoming sentimentality. I was born there, once

birthplace is a magnet it never loses its charismatic power

even though what I remember is poverty, the endless

struggle of the working class. I have a few good memory

and they too are in a way unbecoming.

There was a war the occupier’s soldiers gave me chocolate

and snacks, they had horses and let me sit on them playing

 cowboy; yes the cowboys are universal liked.

My experience has coloured my adult life I’m not so quick in

my condemnation the world is not black and white but has

many nuances; war is not what a soldier wants but at times

he has to fight a war that is not of his choosing but he

has to shoulder the aftermath.  

Happy years or perhaps not

Happy years or perhaps not

Happy Years, or perhaps not

When I was a child mother worked at a fish factory

she had to leave early in the morning so i had to

brush my teeth and wash my face in icy cold water.

In a house of five families there was no bathroom and

only one toilet in the basement and it was my job to

empty the chamber pot before going to school.

 From the socialists in power then it was seen to that

every child got breakfast at school.

 When you are a child, poverty is abstract if you get

enough food like boiled potatoes, fried turnips and

mother’s home made fish cakes. On Sundays we had

– dare I say it- meat cakes with mushy peas and

of course boiled potatoes. The rest of that feast were

mixed together and fried as an evening meal.

Our poverty was lack of hygiene wearing our jumpers

too long and underwear had to be worn until April as we

only had one set each. But as a child I never concerned

myself with bagatelles, it was only in my teens I became

aware of our poverty and felt shame; a profound rooted

sense of inferiority, which made my prickly and on guard.

You are happy yes you know you are, then an avalanche

A mountain of shit hit you  and it will never wash off.

the dream of freedom

The Dream of Freedom

This little town was run by important women who had leadership roles

within state and finance sector and no children played in the streets,

they were playing in a park made of foam and rubber.

Women in this town due to important work and long education,

tended to marry in their late thirties and usually with young shadowy

men who had no domestic role other than sleeping with them and

looking handsome in a suit.  

In the park created by anxious mothers, a boy found a hole in the fence

squeezed through it and came into a world  that had sharp corners and

hard ground, a place where animals are not toys and dogs bite when annoyed.

Curious the boy kept walking till he came to where the town ended and

the poor lived in pre-fabricated cabins and roads were only swept by women

outside their doors. Children played in the street, they were a noisy lot he soon

 joined in games and had great fun and when he fell and scraped his knee cried

a little, the other children laughed, this is nothing, and he soon forgot his pain.     

The boy had an epiphany, he and the other children in the foamy park were

prisoners of their over fretful mothers. He walked back to the bogus park

opened the gate wide and freed the other inmates from mothers crushing love

and guilt over not having time to nurture them.