Insurgency

He rode on the roof-rack flinging rocks at road signs:
Take this Darlington!
Up yours Chipping Sodbury!
Always a slow overarm stroke
Like a spin bowler –
He let the car’s momentum do the mule-work.
It was his way of getting back
At a world where we always know
Where we are;
The clang as the stone struck home,
His triumphant roar,
Hairy encounters with police cars.
And I would like to tell you
That it comes from a very interesting dark place,
That he had to watch his wife die
After a botched liver operation
And at the end her piss was coming out
In a tube and she was delirious and
Screaming for her mother who’d been
In the ground ten years now,
Picked off by influenza when her boiler broke
During a cold snap, and they didn’t
Find her for five days,
Slumped in her armchair with the brown sweat stain
From where her head rubs against the fabric
And when the policeman touches the back of her hand
It feels like leftover chicken straight from the fridge,
I would like to tell you that he was broken
By all these things and more,
But he was not,
He had a happy childhood,
His Dad built him a rope-swing
And his favourite pudding was arctic roll and ice cream.