A Boy

A Boy

During the day
up where the stairs turn,
a boy can spider his arms
and legs to each wall.
Hang there, suspended, listen to the house.

Listen to the hall clock
flex its fat movement.
The lubricated baby - wedged in a royal blue pram - tug of
warring
with a string of painted faces,
elastic tight across the hood.

Up there,
with the cobwebs and a coating of nicotine,
a boy can go missing in fantasy
as an express judders and rolls the terrace,
flips him via The Odeon
to drink and brawl with Gable and Tracy
in the turmoil of the San Francisco Earthquake.

At night in the throttling dark
a boy will carefully perch
listen for the boots and shouts
arguments and blue fights.
And in the suffocating black
know the depleted shuffle of a man
on the pitch pine steps.
Followed by the ale, chips
and piss stench of a woman.