growing pains

growing pains

 

there’s a pack of surly black dogs

snarling and hissing at my heels

it scatters when I turn to face it,

regathers when I’m feeling down

 

one of the litter lives inside me

it shrinks, it grows,

sometimes a monster

sometimes a runt,

but it’s always around

 

what set it off?

did it creep in while I sucked

milk at mum's unwilling breast?

 

or during a thrashing

for messing myself

when stuck up a tree

aged three?

 

maybe dad was to blame

trying to kill me

as I fought him off,

the best I was able,

from under our prefab kitchen table

 

the black pup feasted futile years

at my red brick grammar where 

I was outpaced by high-fliers

eyeing Oxbridge Honours

 

it grew bigger and bigger

as failure compounded failure

and the school predicted a future 

‘amounting to not very much’

 

life was rarely 'all quiet' at home

my parents' perpetual warfare

brought purpose to their lives

and misery to mine 

 

and so it goes,

the cur inside thrived

 

when dad packed his bags 

for one more 'final' exit

mum would light a fag,

act all nice, sing pop songs

blue moon, deep purple,

dance around the house, 

buy Spangles 

and not slap me for slurping

 

dad always came back

they’d kiss and make up

and so ‘la lotta continua’

 

aged eighteen at a

‘Georgie Fame All-Nighter’

lost in a world of my own,

a blonde, pretty, sashayed across

 

I thought she fancied me

but she looked me up and down,

‘you think you can dance... but you look stupid,’

instead

 

the gross mastiff drooled - 

days of fatness lay ahead,

 

I never danced again.