I was nine years old when you exploded onto
my road long flaxen hair blue eyes from Kensington,
although you said Hammersmith,
to look less posh.
Either way, the Western side of the Smoke
seemed like a sun-washed island with chandeliers
to this Leyton-oriented meridian-straddler.
Your Mum looked fine too, and in my mind
at first she was your sister. I see her
now and then on her way back from
her gallery, still looking fine eighteen years on.
Your Dad had a voice like the Queen’s park ranger
and fingers that waltzed across the majors
and minors on a fat bald communist’s
comedy show that we quoted and quoted
in between seeing how far we could gob
off playground swings we weren’t allowed on anymore
and dotting fizzy drink cans across the street
for the sweet-tasting crunch of tyre on aluminium
and swearing loudly and ringing on
tower-block doorbells then rushing back into the lift.
My heart skipped the day the lift door started closing
and you squeezed clattering round it.
I thought you’d be sliced in two like Berlin.
Remember when I nearly took your eye out with a dart?
You didn’t even swear loudly at me,
nor I at you when that plastic bottle
crashed into my face.
I’ve still got the scarlet under my nose. No hair
will ever grow there.
Remember when we disguised that edifice of dog-shit
as a mound of torn cardboard?
Qasim’s parents had to buy him new shoes,
and trousers.
Two or three cars needed a wash.
It was love alright.
The iron curtain across my heart was lifting,
but such things were still sick and girly, so
I never dared ask if you
were being likewise amalgamated.
There were no embraces,
no gazes in eyes,
no kisses, no stroking of hair,
no holding of hands or anywhere else,
just a bullet in the heart
when you discovered American cartoons
and the football-team boys.
They talked the talk, walked the walk,
had silky skills, while I couldn’t kick a ball
without spooning it onto a roof
or into a thorn-bush or a big old lady’s garden.
You even started speaking like your Jamaican friends,
while most of mine were Gandhi’s children.
You left one world for another when you became top scorer
and started using words like ‘raasclaat’
and ‘batty-mans’.
I lost you forever then.
Sometimes I still feel this,
even though nowadays
we both tend to love girls instead.
