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STREET
GAMES
I
was born with earache. My first
memory
was of, tightly pursed
on
both side of my head, a pain
like
dark bees chewing at my brain,
a
sort of honey-talk, reversed.
In
the nineteen-thirties the cure
for
that was a peroxide skewer-
squirt
in your ear: a chemical
that
foamed a yellow, acid pool
to
clean out your head, make it pure.
My
thoughts have been good ever since.
I
didn’t need hell to convince
me
that boys had better behave.
I
had mild ambitions, I’d slave
over
dead semantics, old prints
and
discover what god or beast
gave
our streets meaning. I released
myself
on the neighbourhood scruffs
as
inventor: even the toughs
lagged
back. I was some sort of
priest.
Each
game had its rules which you learned
or
would get your head knuckle-burned.
We
all said it was not so bad
as
being roughed up by your dad.
And
we were dead right, all concerned.
Street
dumb, we’d appreciate
box-shows:
peepers would dilate
at
fag-card slides of bathing belles,
cricketers,
famous cars, sea shells.
For
TV’s new world we could wait.
That
was before the war, before
I
was six. I couldn’t
ignore
the
bees in the head and the hits
from
my dad in his pay-day fits;
I
liked life and knew then what for.
Ghosts
come to feed. I’ve always
paid.
In
those street days we bought a grade
of
manna that only kids eat.
Grey
rain sluicing pavements may beat
outside
now, but the sun has stayed.
Alan
Marshfield
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