Houses: One to Seven

Mel tells me to connect
With The Past.
'It will make you feel less,
You know, disparate.'
She has misused a word again
I forgive her this much.

Newsholme: brass monkey winters,
The 3-bar heater tells us
We are aspirant middle class
And it is the eighties.
The chimney hacks black
A coal scar above my brow.

White House: old Freud and his sandman
He uses the German 'unheimlich'
Meaning uncanny: home not home
There are drafts, beams, attics.
Cracked milk bottles, legless shrews.
An eighteenth century Barratt Home.

Middlebeck: our neighbour
Is a raving queen, a village pimp
To a lad called Stuart
Stuart smokes the crack
All the feng shui in the world
Can't keep death off the doorstep.

Waveney: I forget to try,
I forget to work,
I forget to kiss boys.
Someone corpsed it in my wardrobe
Is this what the prospectus promised?
3 am alarms set off by Vita.

Newmarket St: we have our glory year
And it is sweeter than the ten jellies
In the fridge which we ignore
Until the last day.
This regimentation
We cannot house.

Parker Rd: when we leave,
I expect it to cave
Poe-style, into putrid rubble.
Either that, or a blue plaque:
'You couldn't fault us
For trying.'

Unthank: we fucked
On every chess-board square
Made the bones in the garden
Into a talisman to ward off
More wrong-doers.
Took wonders for signs.