The Boy of Silence Rewrite
The face behind the harlequins gaze
hides the scars of yesterdays man.
Born in an Attercliffe slum
in the rags of fathers graft,
with a pencil for a voice
stolen from milk mans note.
.
A boy in possession of an imagination
and no future
Who can still see a glimmer in the rust
buried in the abandoned steel works,
lost in council’s regeneration
of a green field sites that now offers
the quest for a four leaf clover.
.
This gift can be a lonely thing
in a world of regimented minds.
Inspiration needs a partner
for every word is a journey.
Writing belongs to my addiction
and my love
for the glorious water of Scotland.
.
A single malt can make a man hear
the ghosts from the past.
The fear of being the scruffiest lad at school
leaves a Generals memory of war
bullies and a pregnant girls shame.
.
A school is a flag that I shall not pass
for its contents means nothing to me.
The wood that that lost its view
to the Stalag of tomorrow’s drones
can only cry in silence.
.
But I who was born in its shadow
found solitude and my fortress
inside a tent of twigs.
My refuge from a cold uncaring world.
My soul could never connect with
the wage packet teachers
who are as forgetful as me.
.
I was the boy that future could not buy.
A boy who found utopia in the dreams of innocence
under the protection of a mighty oak.
.
Curiosity led to the search of detritus,
discarded rubbish of yesterdays dream.
My aging presence still remembers,
the torn book of Sassoon
thrown into the brambles abandoned,
as was the generation within it was.
.
I was once the sapling whose audience was the wood
and applause came from imagination,
though the spirits of the past looked on.
The immortality of silence
is only a pretender, perhaps,
it too was a child looking for a voice..
.
For day and night is but a moment
Mortality cannot keep pace.
The boy still shouts half a century on
now encased in the moss of dying memories,
of a ghost I never knew.
.
An immortal presence that watched,
as every word left my soul.
For we were linked by a past life
and this spirit found redemption
in refusing the hand of God,
and embracing the space we call solitude.
.
A being that time cannot touch.
And long after I am dead ,
the wind will carry this immortal feather
and in its dance a ghost will be seen.
Looking for a stolen pencil
and a torn book that nobody reads.
Copyright © Steven Cooke | Year Posted 2016
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