Heath-Robinson Manual of Repairing Broken Hearts. Volume 1

Heath-Robinson Manual of Repairing Broken Hearts. Volume 1

Meccano Me

In the dankness of the cellar
where the dust isn’t rude but there to be expected,
I discovered short trousered memories
of the pastimes I once eagerly pursued
now shut away in a brown cardboard suitcase.
The clockwork train set that Beecham
would have axed because the track went in a circle;
never went there but always came back,
a Meccano set, still in it’s box, with a half
built crane arm abandoned long before
I held a girl in my arms for the first time,
crashed Dinky cars that had flown from walls
or mangled into each other like stock car jousters,
a penknife, deflated leather football,
ripping yarns from torn Boys Own Annuals.

That night on the kitchen table,
using the tiny spanners, I stripped the clockwork
motor from the train, and using the Meccano
built the framework to create its new housing,
bending the red metal sheets around to make it whole.
With the rusty penknife, that I had honed
on the stone step by the back door,
like I had done all those years ago, before
using the silvered blade to carve
West Ham hammers into hoardings and scar
the pine school desks during bored afternoons;
I performed open heart surgery. Transplanted
my broken heart with this new
clockwork replica, oiled rusty cogs
with tears and sealed the joins of this mechanized
Heath-Robinson contraption with congealed blood.
I then closed up my chest, stitched
with the lace from the football
leaving just a tiny keyhole. Wore the key
around my neck like a 00 gauge crucifix.

At night,
now I no longer hear the gentle midnight sleepings
of your soft breathing, I listen to the whirring
sound of my blood going round
proud by my abilities to make do and mend,
so pleased with myself that at last I could escape
the brown cardboard suitcase you had abandoned me in.