a visage of a village

 a visage of a village 

black    of course 

a lot of these tips up here are used for hardcore

these days 

underneath many structures the shiny slag lies

weighbridged out and paid for in time

cut in lung-blood and short-dead soot

sulphur the little children to come unto me

he said    in the chapel      as

the hades chimneys poured scorn

upon a village in tutelage 

forlorn 

with my head between my palms the culvert opens

way way back to when each fleeting moment

was in actual fact carved in the chancel of my mind

laid upon the altar as a repleted host 

that bore no malice 

every image as warm as a rough welsh shawl 

coarse knit 

this wall where a boy could jump and score his shins

bloodied 

a rusty stanchion of a telegraph pole to shimmy up

splintered

a stone block for kids to stand upon to view their comics

windowed

a seat unsat in a corner unused 

here comes the bus

so many times and places where death was cheated

houses sitting hidden until they weren’t 

demolished the fate of every childhood

the contours of an expanding world moving

slowly away from a reality that never was

as fixed as child’s lore would have it told 

swop you my tricycle for your scooter

jennifer diamond now as dead as twinkle twinkle

squeezed between the pine ends of the ends of terraces

secret paths know only to a few kids in the dark gang 

between the pub and the chapel a rough road

where the bonfires of vanity burned every november

now i remember what i forgot

that it is too late

it was always too late

so just forget it 

forget all the above

it’s just the slag of foundation 

to be built upon

a brick with my name on

anon