family album

family album  

 and a here with a granddad unknown unknowable

indefinite epithets unilluminated a stern expression

a serious face of his age deftly inscrutable

a granny too indistinct crossing a distance

yet focused a deadpan gaze into a stillborn life

that stares back like a knife

then a father young almost handsome smug with potential

the future a wild animal to be captured and caged   beside

a mother inside her beauty peering out with uncertain

apology in a smile that never quite reaches her eyes

and an Imago windswept with the then and the now

caught in the gusts of a life stiffening and cracking

already brittle with rust

shoplifting

 shoplifting 

 

we’ve all given it a go

the gang identity the group skin

draped in insolence and arrogance

all that belonging that longing to be in

the chorus the song and dance of adolescence

that becomes a one-man show

 

how the mind becomes body

the somatic awareness of self

that sudden sweaty existential voice

the dare the dread that life upon the shelf

to take to pocket to make that choice

to move to the music   the choreography …

 

and breathless the song ending

and the buzzing adrenal silence

that some can never switch off 

the trinket in the hand that defiance

that tells how a life will be lived

the visceral precipitous bending

 

young Imago’s hand hovers …