King Bam Smiled on My Fourteenth Year

Sometimes the dangerous mood steps up behind me
Lifts the lid of my hair, swabs my brain with petrol
Tosses a careless match, then watches
Hands in pockets, a grim smirk like a Medici festival
And strangely I am back in there again,
Fourteen, orphaned, waiting for death or rescue.

Calcified sun-thoughts, frozen
In the mouth-black of that cavern
All flushes of green, lime-scaled,
The word 'dappling', or 'breeze', petrified,
No recall of bluebells here, just
The brittle hairbells crepitation
A dry tintinabulation, creaking
Woodlice corpses squeaked by ear,
All is bleach grey, if only

I sharpened the knife until its bevel
Was too weak. There was death
In that foil-thin edge, the edge's death
As well as my own. I tested it
In the hollow behind my ear.
I fumbled and climbed in blackness
My eyes tarred-shut by the same rogue
Who ate my torchlight with a pure belch
Of idiotic disdain and incomprehension.

I climbed upwards. Falling into black
Would expedite things. But the black
Took shape, formed itself, forms
Forming formlessly from
Formal nothing. No word ever
For formaldehyde of nothing.

Bam is King.

A brainshadow of words in front of my eyes,
Rotate head, wordshadows stay still, real,
A prayer for my grandmother, buried three months.

Who was King Bam? Mindless scrawl,
Graffiti tag. He ruled the underworld, I think.
Was kind enough to let me out for a brief excursion.
I followed up the way he pointed,
The tear-faceted trees and sun are agony.