Back to the old house

Poetry

There is still a flicker of the hallogen strip lights as I walk in
the same way where I would chase the darkness with each blink
after we’d all take off the jackets our parents had chosen for us
to keep warm for the firework display.
That moon-yellow-defribilator sprung my memory
to the bathroom tiles where spoken evocation lingers in the granite,
the Egyptian prints lingering; an audience of birth
twenty years spent within a wooden frame,
I only a few.

The stairs still creak in the spot where I would jump
believing that objectifying time for sleep was frivolous.
Now I long for it, like I do that old Spanish guitar
ceaselessly resting against a glossy white door frame.
Static clings to the textured wallpaper like an old record
clutches to its sleeve, as if a lover
it waits for the resonance of touch.

Head space is rental, tenants window shop
and their forgotten pictures lay dormant as my father loses count of them.
Like an monk he apologises to himself
while he rids himself of memories as if an act of purity;
of casual castration.
He tells me he’s grown into his ugliness despite the beauty around him,
I can’t tell whether it is a tattoo he waits to burn off,
or a palace, a red sandstone gallery
filled with birthdays, funerals
or menial suicide sundays.

Upstairs there is the chair my mother would sit at
either reading or drinking black coffee,
bubble wrap has formed its way around it like a cocoon.
Once a Picasso, now a cataract.
I want to rip it open, and see if it creaks like it used to -
the moan of laughter that lit the many worn out bulbs.

The past paints this Manderley of unrequited wonder
on an easel of cold brick covered in moss
as if an empty glass in heat
or a lovers back hastily turned
or a typewriter with no ribbon.
The wallpapers stopped wilting,
the radiators won’t bleed
as the light flickers and fades.