I'm sure the teachers concerned
and especially the Head and
The Chairman of Governors
whose Mayor-making I went
to on behalf of school would
hope it is my learning to read
and write well enough to win
handwriting competitions as
well as pass public exams that
occupies my brain and heart, but
what sticks, really sticks to prompt
a torrent of recollections is the
reek of soap in the washrooms:
'twas a Carbolic Childhood mine.

(c) C J Heyworth September 2014

She soldiers on
with a limp
from an old gunshot wound
that put a stammer in her soul.

She hesitates upon standing,
and often winces at an over-hastened step.
Stairs are her nightmare, as is most anything up.
Like being trapped
in a cage made of rubber bands
she is limited, but can force her way
in some direction.

She wont tell you how she got it
nor even where it really is.
The thigh, the hip, the gut; as is anyone's guess.

My money's on somewhere else.

She is dissolved in some solution
made with three parts carbolic acid
two parts toothsome regret
one part
pure concentrated time.

If I could pick her up and carry her
I would
but she
would scream, and kick, and holler
I know. So I'll let her limp
It's her way.

I don't mean to be trigger happy.

Oh, they don’t know they’re born today,
What do they know of surviving a war?
Suffering blackouts, hardship of rationing,
With never a thought of ‘asking for more’.

They act so tough, never knowing real fear,
Never experiencing terror and dread,
They’d be dancing to a different tune,
If the Luftwaffe still flew overhead.

I tell you, kids of today; know now’t,
Claiming life’s hard: they’re having a laugh,
Let em’ clean grime off a twelve hour shift,
With carbolic soap in an old tin bath?

Talk of going without, they get too much!
We only had skipping ropes, whistles, bells,
Maybe an orange and apple at Christmas,
Along with monkey nuts still in their shells.

If we were lucky, we got a shiny penny,
Truth be told, there was never any shame,
Today they expect brand new bikes,
Plus the latest craze of a video game.

A sign of the times, life always changes,
Rose-tinted memories; forever make hay,
I’ve said it before; I know I’ll say it again,
Oh, they don’t know they’re born today.

© Paul Chafer 2014

Yiska gobbed
on the window pane
in the locked ward.

I stood next to her
and gazed out
the window.

Snow was on the fields
and on the tops of trees.

She smelt
of carbolic soap.

The spittle dripped down
the glass pane.  

Couldn't sleep,
Yiska said.

Bad dream?

Each day
is a bad dream.

A rook disturbed snow
on a tree top.

What doesn't **** us,
I said.

Turns us mad,
she said.

Makes us stronger,
I read some place.

Are we stronger?

Slow snow flakes
drifted by the window.

She wiped the spittle
with the sleeve
of her long
purple night gown.

I don't dream
of him any more,
she said,
don't dream
of the ****.

The word hung
in the air about us
like an angry bee.

What do you
dream about?
I asked.

The church,
the altar, people
watching me
in my white dress,
but not of him.

Has your mind
shut him out?

Hope so.

The snow fell harder.
Black birds
took flight
into the grey dawn.

What do you
dream about?
She asked.

A bell rope,
a tower,
ticking clock.

She sighed.
Her small ****
seemed stiff
in the dawn light.

Have you stopped
slitting your wrist?

So far.

That hanging attempt
had those nurses
******* themselves
with panic.

I recalled the face
of a nurse
mouthing words
through the small panel
of glass that evening.

Someone
turned on the radio.

The night nurse
gazed at us
by the window.

We saw her reflected
in the window
as if in a mirror.

Plump in her uniform,
her dark hair
tied in a bun.

Yiska moved away
leaving her carbolic perfume
on the air like
a disturbed memory.

I just continued
to vacantly stare.

Why is all the world light, and I am small underneath?
Just a black bottom under this apple tree?
Why am I in the limelight, the foreground?
The light pours no citrus drink, but a cyanide fruit pit pound!

The over-saturated curtains tail my frail feet.
Much busier than a yellow-black bee, bumping till its stinger gets caught in a fabric hemming
and it dies with no one noticing.
The girl who reads, the tree that sifts its rotten leaves;
they care less, less for a discoloration that unfortunately eats at me.

Even when the elders waltz the foxtrot dance so that even my dwarf legs can follow suit,
I will never be quite slow, or fast enough? for all of you.
I disintegrate daily into almost nothing.
I stare, but no one stares at me.

Oh, haven’t I written a piece about shadows and light?
What’s with me! I use the same machine work!
Metaphors, imageries, diction, diction mutating to a deeper fiction. Unoriginal it is!
The masses cling onto clichès with their pointed teeth;
why can’t I, I lodge into that all-inclusion?
Why do I repeat my own themes? Have I never learned critical thinking?
I depend on repetition: same old, same old (did I mention the old ‘same’?)
thing to grasp any new concept!

Maladaptive daydreamer
who cannot conjure up any ink
of fresh difference! What purpose do I hold
in this awful, spineless world?
I am too awfully, awfully simple and dumb
to succeed in any other playing field!
Reality, what foreign entity is she?
Maybe a solemn quiet would do it for me.
(So maybe I’ll have an extended vacation,
and revisit my only talent some other day.)

What do the (sappy) honey-loving poets write on?
The (sawdust) stardust in eye pupils, and
igniting our hearts alight (till it guzzles that red stream and we become only such, and the carpet gets a free dye job).
Apparently, everything pure and worthy is atomized into
(carbolic soap I allow carbonation of its soda acid in my eyes) diamonds.

On the subject of atomic level substances,
let's rehearse the Compton effect:
Heat me up to a hundred keV
like cheap microwave dinner, so that I propel—
whoosh!— tink against metallic beings
till I decrease, and I am powerless.
Each new orbit of opportunity I seize,
I result with less, and the opportunity snatches from me.
Glistening shoe shiner whose price tag appeals to the average Joe,
then I swipe: scuffing up my rounded toe.

She tattooed those other girls’ arrow on herself because:
“I’m pulled back to soar farther,”
yet this stretching has lasted for… months?
Compare this not to a crossbow, but to that of a
medieval rack, that gruesome torture device!
My tissue is tearing asunder, but this is polar from breaking bread!
I ache, I ache, I ache! Isn’t yoga supposed to tranquilize you to a grounded state, not death?

Why is the world so light when I am so heavy?
Why must I “lust for a life” that lusts not for me?

And from here on in it is all downhill
Slow yet resolutely unmajestic
There is time to spare, there is time to ****

Grey becoming opaque impedes the will
Watch the body turn into a mimic
And from here on in it is all downhill

No synapse snaps to fire the frontal mill
Memory melts, scented with carbolic
There is time to spare, there is time to ****

This ******* does ****-all, this pill
Just gives us a slightly calmer relic
And from here on in it is all downhill

Orifices a hat-trick!; Senses nil!
Relief insists on being comic
A time to despair of the times we killed

Healthy and dead, you are not living still
Though you will forever be iconic
And from here on in it is all downhill
There is time to spare, there is time to ****

i think i have a picture of
the car wash in betws,
model railway and vistas.

yet i cannot find it.
the little people
were waving their arms around.

so i am going with the frog car
and carbolic soap. the middle
one being imperial leather.

thank you.



sbm.

The wind smells of
frozen milk and carbolic,
this is the edge of December;

a slopping out of leaves
and burnt wood, the overspew
of ovens that keeps

us holding out coats at the throat.
The winter is still out,
we wait for the last bus of snow.

I had a close shave today
I was frothing at the mouth
because some fukin eejit cut
the corner in a Mitsubishi.

I never take a bath, no need,
only horses sweat, I don't
even perspire, but I did once,
before I was circumcised, then
I had royal jelly under my fore
skin. Carbolic soap and Andrews
liver salts mixed together, is what
I wash in, removes everything,
even DNA from teenagers,
especially Virgins, they can be a
bit problematic when they become
whistle blowers in later years.

I had one like that, if she goes to
the media and asks to have my
phallus on an identity parade,
I'm going to be ******. I had best
tell Maam and advertise for a
******* donor. I'm not racist, or
anti semitic, but no blacks or
Jews need apply.

Buckingham Palace 1 London.