Finally titled THE SELLER'S BOY (FINAL EDITION)

Finally titled the seller's boy

Who remembers walking down memory lane?
As picturesque as it might seem,
Very suitable for a painting or a film,
Like that old Havana tree,
Leafless with a sense of its breeze,
Amongst the branches reading,
Something that reminds me of poetry.

Who remembers walking down their memory lane?
As something worth regretting.
Like what you learnt from love,
That it's a symbol,
Rather like peace
Out of its place
In juxtaposition.

I remember walking down memory lane.
An orphan as I may be,
As often as I care to believe.
Running down to meet my mother,
After school, at home time;
You can wish the teachers good bye,
And they reply,
With honesty and sincerity,
That you have a lovely day,
Knowing fully well that the day's nearly over.

Who cares to believe in memory lane?
As children we care not to keep memories,
As we run and play,
Knowing how to walk and talk,
Never forgetting names and places,
Like the park with the lake,
The swans, geese and ducks,
The dog with three legs,
The grandpa playing chess,
And you can tell he's awake,
Even though he looks asleep,
Because you just do.
You feed them bread,
All of the animals in the park,
Even the statues caste in stone,
Like the gates,
All majestic.

Who cares to relive the past?
He was three and she was four!
All sweet and sour,
Like the pudding on the stove,
Made by a sister that cannot cook,
As hard as she might wish,
Constantly wishing that she might die,
Yet stays up late,
To read her book.
Not sleeping till all the pages have sunk right down,
To shed a tear when things are brown.
To illuminate the dark light,
That she says she sees,
As much sense as that makes to me,
It is compelling to find out,
That she sees the night during the day,
Leads me to wonder,
Leads me to stray,
To wonder whether she sleeps at night,
Or whether that's like day,
Because the moon,
Shines and sways,
By the window.
To us it is beautiful
But what ever we like:
She opposes.
Happiness and fun,
Despair and glum.
As simple as that;
That factor worked out,
She climbs to the rooftop,
To get a better view of the ground.
But as we all know
Common sense must prevail,
And the best view of the ground,
Is surely concrete bound.

To forget such things are what memories are for.
A contrast in contradiction,
Explaining what cannot be explained,
Not withholding the simple care,
That that little boy is still with us,
So do not even dare,
To gossip,
Such travesty.
To make idle,
Things that are precious,
To some an all,
Like the bone and marrow,
May mean science to us,
But hers saved mine and thine,
So with such things in mind,
We wine and dine,
That our sister's died in vain,
To save the heart and save the brain,
To accomplish nothing,
And become routine.

I remember the arms we had,
That helped us along.
Grateful for the exchanges,
Of clothes and cake,
Of food that was properly baked.
Mixed with nothing but honesty,
And humble pie, with a hint of mint sauce.
And we walked in fields that were now gold,
I was five and you were six!
I, a mother's son,
Like never before,
Gazing now at the night sky,
In my eyes a death spurned once more.
No hope but of kindness,
Understanding the matter,
Of the trip...
You had wires into your bones,
And now you needed me.

I was obsolete and I was wise,
I learnt from my sister,
To stay in one place,
Because you might not like you,
But others did.
I learnt from mother,
Who said you always grew faster then I did,
To appreciate life,
Whatever it may be,
It is nothing more then a piece of cake,
A piece of clothe, a piece of coin,
A piece of love, a piece of sharing,
Empathy and ever enduring.
And I sat on a cook's grave,
Crying like I do,
Remembering the orchards,
Of apple trees and leaves,
The apple I have in my hand,
When I ran and fell,
Then got up and became brave,
And found you wiping your tears,
As I came in,
Hiding something from me,
Instead of telling me straight,
That father died during the war,
Because someone told him to go,
That someone sat on a bench far away,
In London perhaps,
And told me father to go murder,
People, for the better of all
And when he refused to kill the people
The people killed him.

I was nine and you were ten!
In bed by eight.
And hoping and stirring in my heart,
That everyone could care less,
Like I did deep down.
But in hospital,
You fought hard and white coats did you proud,
A miracle in the snow,
We could run perhaps,
Once again,
Across the farmyard,
In the midst of spring,
A new year,
Hardly daunting.
I wasn't sad.
I don't know why people around me died,
I was never bad,
I was a good child.
Everyone said so,
And I thought so to,
As I helped you out of your wheelchair,
And pushed you on the swing,
And the wind was in your hair,
And you wished you could run,
I said nothing,
But I thought instead,
That you were running,
All you had to do was close your eyes,
And feel the wind.
Don't patronize the power of imagination!
See the fields falling under the skin!
See the blood seeping through!
See why mother says not go into the field with no shoes on.
And you watched in dismay,
As you open your eyes,
That all is not well,
I gave my marrow and,
I gave my blood.
But as the tree falls down,
Late summer the next year,
You are still in your wheel chair.
God is cruel sometimes,
If you believe in him,
I believe in him,
Because you do.
Although I can't see why,
God would listen to you,
With your hands clasped together,
When he avoids looking at the state of your legs.

I remember coming back from college,
Deciding not to go to university.
I can't live up to the hype.
And going into the kitchen,
With you in it: crying.
And she wasn't even your mother.
She was nothing but your nurse,
She was mine!
And she left me.
And she left me for good.
Not to go shopping,
Not to go on holiday,
Not even to runaway,
But to the worst place you can imagine.
But as the tears grew, breaking through rough terrain,
Building with pleasure that no one wants,
I thanked her.
For not killing her self for me.
For not dying for someone else.
For not being extreme or different.
For not being idle gossip.
For dying because she was sick.
Because I was coming to tell you,
That I would stay at home; to look after her.
Not study and play.
But I can't do that not any more...
I remember thinking exactly that
I would live up to the hype.
I thought this as I went outdoors to cry some place else,
Reaching for my new tree, so far away across the field.
Breathing in deep, because that helps you see.
I picked up the pace, because the tears were coming quickly.
They were fast and thick.
I begun running to find solitude,
For peace, love and deprivation.
I began running for love in the hope that at least you wouldn't leave.
I didn't stop at the heart felt tree, it wasn't the same.
The words on the tree were never-fading; there was a lesson to be learnt from that.
There was a lesson to be learnt from everything.
From the stars above guiding me insane,
From the oranges falling down,
From the cages that wrap the animals at the zoo.
I ran tired now for no particular reason,
For no particular reason at all,

Why do people walk down memory lane,
When so much of it is worth regretting.
For everything there is something opposing it,
It can't exist without the other,
Up and down, above and below,
You and me,
As I returned nearly forty years later.
An invalid, you still are,
Were still unmarried.
You said nothing to my newly shaved face,
But you touched my face.
You made nothing of my cologne,
Yet you took in a whiff of my skin.
You heard little noise about me,
And then here you stood up, not sitting on me fathers handmade chariot.
Recollecting the times when you were in a wheel chair.
A miracle of your time; hands clasping my mouth,
Surviving everything that was thrown in your wake.
And as it happened I came at exactly the right time,
Like clockwork you might say.

I went down the corridor to the cupboard labelled memoirs,
And spoke about it to a poet, who approached me on the street.
For no apparent reason,
Asking about my life,
Offering me tea in return.
And so I spoke,
Throwing the gauntlet down,
Challenging God.
And the words spoke blue and white,
A common favourite,
I was to live like a beggar,
Through my own choice,
That much was true.
There are opposites.
And death is pretty much a deathly opposite,
To the greatest miracle of all:
Life itself.
And to ponder it in dismay was a waste of it,
And to waste it away like I did was cardinal sin.
And to live in hope was not wrong,
And God does not come into that equation.
It is ours and ours alone.
And now we step outside,
And relive those days again.
As old fools we might be,
Not able to run anymore,
Past the stump of old,
Past the fields that were of barley now,
Past the second tree in full bloom,
In the summers eve,
Reaching for a new tree,
A third chapter in our life,
This was by another tree,
By a lake.
A little girl sat on its branches,
We never approached her,
She was from the neighbouring town,
As delicate as a leaf,
Another, the writer spoke to,
Upon my eventual funeral.

I remember that night,
When death was not a case for regret or upsetting one self.
¦When you died of old age¦
You always grew faster then me!
And the last few things you said changed me
Into a new man.
The words being "I asked god, I prayed to god
Even if it's the last thing I ever do please return to me what I have lost,
Return me the seller's boy,
And now I'm upset with him
Because it really is the last few days of my life
I can feel it in my bones,
The bones with your blood!
The blood from your sister's bones!
The body looked after by your mother!
The chair I sat in for half a century made by your father!
And the mind, the one incomplete without you...
She said this as we made our way across the man made lake,
Turning poetry into narrative, narrative into motion,
In the boat made by the father, of the sellers' boy,
The last thing he ever did, before going away.
And like that the night passed.
Death passed me another ironic and unwanted gift:
Two deaths instead of one.
For I had tortured my self on too many nights
To pass this one,
On a boat made for two.

And now much later the poet speaks in my tongue!
In the shape of a memory.
And who cares to go down memory lane,
If not theirs?

The answer lies under the shade of the third tree
Hoping when drawing their last breath
Not arguing for once, on this issue anyway
That god exists,
And hoping by all means
That at least their memory lives on...