Atomised

Beneath the burning yellow sun, I follow the old man dropping my speed to the slowest possible without stalling my scooter and he’s unaware that I’m here. The tower block stretches into the sky casting its shadow over the factory yard where at home time the sons of the unemployed throw potatoes at the workers from their balconies but never hit them and no one complains about the daily ritual assault. Half-bricks thrown through the lounge-windows of the bourgeois and Pakis tormented in their homes until the day they are stronger. Reggae blasts into the streets at mid-day and no one dares challenge the ganja-smoking rasta as he meditates on Jah and tries to forget Babylon breathing down his neck. Blazing grassland, exploding bins and fires on neighbours doorsteps to watch the firemen arrive and create a little excitement. Children steal; fathers fence: money made at the school gates morning, lunch and afternoon. So much is stolen that as much as half is thrown at passing cars for fun: soft ice-cream is the best. Football played before school, break times, dinner times, after school until the light fades. No one passes but it doesn’t matter. Fingering Joy who stands in the bushes to let us smell our first womanly scent and grope roughly and with wonder. The old man turns into his front garden still unaware and I accelerate. The heat dissipates, the sun sets, there is nothing to tell to any other or ask for explanation. Back home, I light a cigarette, pull the curtains while there’s still a little light outside. Senses fade and alone at last it is here that in the darkness with distant sounds, atomised I am and atomised I will be.