THE BOY FROM ELSEWHERE

The mirror concaves my world
like an art deco wave of S shapes
rolling into shore. Translating
here and beyond into now.

The globe of life and death dis-
torts my view, childhood drifts
Into loneliness, the little English
Boy in Belfast.

All I remember is cold toast
And fights, I had to fight my way
through grades , morning, noon
and night I even had to fight
for homework.

That was my playground, I was
always the boy from elsewhere.
Even in my birthplace England
I was called a paddy and beat up

And down, always running from
my fathers bastard past that put him
in the ground. Life is like a Russian
foreboding, a line from a Chekhov story.

Driving through the vertigo snow
talking to yourself. Its all so vague
as if my stroke almost erased it, all I
remember is the bits that concave my heart.