The Nakey Dye

The Nakey Dye

His childhood was some millennia

Sat under a table

Inside a universe of fag smoke

If you stayed too long it stung your eyes

Made them red and weep

So he was safer down there

Could he see his parents faces?

Or were they fog obscured

Like some mountains in China?

The walls must have been stained brown

The carpet infused with ash

Pictures were hung on the wall

Ploughmen great green-grey hills and towering mares

They had no folk heroes

How many times did he fall asleep under his mum’s coat?

On warmer nights was he sat outside

With a packet crisps and a bottle of pop?

And were there other children?

Did they start a gang and did they laugh

A bit like grown-ups laughed?

What did they talk about?

Cowboys and Indians and tin foil robots and action men

Me grand-ma knitted a scuba suit for mine

So I don’t need the one in the shops

And did they all sit under the table together?

And fall asleep in a pile like puppies

Under their mums’ coats?

They would go home eventually

Parents wobbling and warm

The cool midnight air must have been paradise on his face

Dad heaved him into the sky by his armpits

Careful don’t drop him

Stood him up on the brick wall

So he could see

The sleeping town at the foot of the cobbled hill

The amber street lamps shone

Like the stars in the books shine

They don’t flicker at a distance

They twinkle

He’d never seen a firefly

Never seen gold dust

Or fluorescent deep-sea fish

So did he think

It was a Martian colony like on TV

Or a procession of bomb fires

Or dragon eggs

Or pieces of the sun that had flaked away

Maybe that’s why it disappeared at night

Or was it was a city of baccy embers

Warm glowing in the dark?

Dad said

“There you go, Blackpool Illuminations.”

He’d never seen them either

So he believed it.