The Journey Back
By mickleinapickle
- 6603 reads
I had to go back:
there were ghosts to kill.
Only Johnny and I made the trip.
Strange really: the oldest and youngest.
Didn’t seem to mean anything to the others.
Just me, with all the memories fully intact
and Johnny, with no recall of those times.
I remembered the main street,
the bleak council houses
and downbeat people
in that dingy town.
Almost killed
on that road:
siblings in tow,
hurrying as usual,
late for school again,
crossing without looking;
Landrover screeching to a halt.
That irate, red-faced man shouting;
me rushing away with my ragged flock.
“Get stuffed, you miserable bastard!” I yelled.
Everybody shouted and swore, back in those days.
I saw the pub where my Father had his drunken fights.
I was so proud when he beat McGonigal to a pulp.
I can’t remember another time when I was proud:
he left us again soon after that and I hated him.
Johnny and I walked to the house of our birth
in the middle of a rundown, terraced row;
same building, except for the paint.
Seven kids in two bedrooms.
How was it all possible?
Bittersweet memories.
Always ashamed I smelled.
Forever avoiding the Carter boys.
The times when they finally caught me,
when they beat me for being a smelly belly.
No one would ever be friends with the smelly ones,
except Smudger, of course, who stank the way I did.
I hope it went well for you, Smudger, my friend.
It was OK for me when I stopped smelling.
Johnny and I walked to the waterway:
the decrepit, rubbish-strewn canal.
The place that I escaped to,
to avoid the Carter boys,
to escape my Father.
I sailed with pirates,
defeated aliens,
slew dragons,
rescued maidens
fought off invaders;
ran for the hell of it all.
I was a Masai, stalking a lion;
I was Bannister, the top athlete;
I was the first to land on the moon;
I scored the winning goal for England;
I was Scott against the Antarctic winter;
I ran with Buck to answer the call of the wild.
I was just a smelly boy with his smelly thoughts.
A different time and a different set of circumstances;
a place where a silly child dreamed of escaping the dirt.
Johnny laughed when he saw that I had a tear in my eye;
I laughed when I realised I was crying at the memories.
We walked back slowly through that depressing town.
There were still relatives we hadn’t seen for years:
a different bloodline which excluded kids like us,
which was too good for ragged-arsed children.
We decided, best to give them a miss:
thought they’d smell too much.
We left them behind again,
left the town behind;
didn’t need them,
didn’t need it:
we weren’t
smelly
now.
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Comments
Lots of great life writing
Lots of great life writing this morning, and this is one of them. Thank you for posting it!
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Your shared memories were an
Your shared memories were an interesting read.
Jenny.
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The middle section, full of
The middle section, full of dreams and imagination, really fleshes this out, giving hope for the narrator and also making us feel his childhood humiliations even more keenly. The ending is really uplifting - the reader wants to shout 'YES!' that the poet and his sibling have realised their own worth. A moving piece of life writing.
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This thoughtful and evocative
This thoughtful and evocative piece about kids' memories, and the perspective of time, is our Facebook and Twitter Pick of the Day! Please share/retweet if you enjoy it too.
Picture via Pixabay, in the Public Domain.
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Good to hear your voice again :)
Gut reaction: I like the format, sands of time and an inhale <> exhale of lungs breathing through the scented trail of the past (you draw attention to smell several times) Good stuff sir.
best regards
Lena x
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So clever - l love seeing
So clever - l love seeing shape poems.
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Really solid writing, and I
Really solid writing, and I like the shape of it.
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Real strong work. Thoughtful,
Real strong work. Thoughtful, touching, entertaining and funny too. Nice tone/ way of relating this to the reader, too... natural. Props, much enjoyed.
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A warm and thoughtful
A warm and thoughtful reminiscence, this is our Poem of the Week. Congratulations!
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I left till now to read this,
I left till now to read this, Michael, because I wanted to savour it. I could see that it was an exceptional poem by the first few lines and was not disappointed. It is very original and imaginative.
Truly worthy of all the accolades.
Best, Luigi
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'Get stuffed you miserable
'Get stuffed you miserable bastard!' - the least 'poetic' line but the one that shows that you had a good chance of escape, that you 'didn't take it lying down'.Good poem in a good format.
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