Take them home
And mutilate them
With his savaging taste
He would cut them up
Into slicing silvers of raw flesh
Fried with their own fat
He would boil their bloodying ligaments
Into a cauldron of curdling blood

Needless
To say
Five guarded children did not want to go
Across the killing fields
So with caution
And with fear
The children ran
Across the light tight field
Bodies trembled
With reluctance
They headed towards the raven iron fence

A six-foot high fence
Bordered Walton Hall Park with its forest of black steel
Stoic
Steel
Stood
In a long column of silence
Sharp
Spiked
Still
The shadows shifted their silhouetted spears
Across the sobering field of a stable sky
Dimness
Flickered across its shield
Like the deadened light of a dimming candle

Stooped in terror
The fretting file of fearful faces
Climbed the cold steel fence
Columns
Of black bodies clamored and lumbered
Over skewering spears of piercing steel
Haunted in horror
Flinched with fright
Four out of five
Escaped
Into the satanic night
Over the fence
Leaving
One
Paralyzed with fear
Your fearsome dad was skewed to steel
Pants impaled
Stuck to steel
He shook on the fence
With the frozen face of an ashen marshmallow

Abandon
He was left

Alone

With the murky memories of a macabre murderer
Stranded
On a spire of steel
He was left

Alone

Dangling
Rooted on the spot
With mortal malevolence
Hovering
He hung in horror

All alone

In a putrid pool of petrified piss
The others had left him
In the heart of darkness
He clung to his cross of steel
Tears emerged
With hymns of help

Darkness
Enveloped
The spineless sounds
In the distance
The fair lights dimmed
With despair
The music was muted
The lights were extinguished
Time was endless
Hanging in the dark
Haze hovered onto a mist of faceless tears

Suddenly
The darkness cracked
To the daunting sounds of distant footsteps
At first
The sound stopped
And stalked with silence
Step by stop
It encroached with caution
Closer and closer
It would advance with weakness
Pressing
Forward
Into the vegetative leadenness of the dead mask night
It would motion
Forward
Into the watchful night
The faint sounds of silence
Would resonate like the rhythmical beat
Of a mythical warrior
It crept
In a crypt of darkness
Close
Very close
It stopped in a full breath of miasmic air

A quick
Touch
Crawled
Across the blackening
A smooth clammy hand
Spirited a cold finger across the thigh of his leg
Perspiration poured
It trickled down his saturated pants
Tearing away
It pulled at the ankle of his shivering leg
Looking down
With a provident of misgivings
Cold sweat
Tortured his failing heart
Missing a murmur
He froze with transfixed terror
Looking up
A crescent-shaped smile
Mooned the night
With a peppersdent grin
It was Ronny
He came back
To help your dad

The children had gasped
With relief
The eldest granddaughter asked
What ever happened to Ronny

Ronny
Like I said
Had become a qualified driver for Scott’s Bakery
A few years
Into the job
He talked to your dad about the possibility
Of joining the Merchant Marine
In time
He joined

Later
Drink and drugs
Drowned with depression
He was in and out of the lunatic asylum
Ending his life
At the end of a rope
Suicide
His house of cards had folded

At peace

He left a small piece of himself
Locked
And linked
Into the interlocking time of the past and present
His memory remains
In the archives of your dad’s puzzle
Perhaps
Not as important
As it once was
But still important
As it is now

Heartbreak by the Number, Guy Mitchel, 1959

James

A typical workday
With your dad delivering bread
By coincidence
His bread route was in the same district
We lived in
Stopping off
At the corner grocery shop
Close to his grandma’s house
He heard the news
About Jimmy

James

PERSONified youthfulness and confidence
He was the consummate adolescent
He embodied innocence and sincerity
Which is why we love
Jimmy
As your dad would call him

James

Lived in Lind Street
Next Street
To my mom’s house on Ismay Street
Your dad’s cousins lived on Lind Street
So when your dad visited his Aunt Queenie
He would often play with James and his cousins

Jimmy

Was also his school chum
They were in the same class
Together
They would often play football
In the school playground
James had one younger brother
And his name was

Frank

PERSONable in nature
With two outstanding physical traits
He had bright red hair
Which glowed like an orange beacon
And a stammer
That could stretch across the River Mersey
In fact
His stuttering could be coupled
Onto a slow moving train
And it would still go on and on
If you missed what he said the first time
You would never ask him to repeat it again
As it would be like missing the last bus
You would have to wait a bloody long time
For it to come again

Often

The naughty boys would take Frank to the corner chippy
Then they would give him the money
And tell him to order the chips
This is the way the order came out
Ccccould I haveeeee th th th three pppennney wwoorth off f sh sh shit innnn tthe ppap eer pplleease
Of course young Frank
Meant chips not shit
Poor little sod
His face would turn as red as his carroty hair
You may laugh
I know those boys
Did not mean to be mean
But the cheeky little buggers
Thought it
It was all in good fun

James

A very handsome young boy
Who would engage life
With an open smile
He would always greet you
With his gentlemanly custom

An athlete
To emulate
He was on all the school’s sports teams
And his PERSONality played well
With his admiring school chums
James was the captain of the school’s football team
Respected
With envy
But never with malice
Nor sourness

Your dad would of loved to have been
On the school football team
He had the skills
But lacked the stamina
The long football fields puffed his breath away
So he played on the street
With
James
He played on the school playground

Jimmy
Was a school prefect
A perfect PERSON for this position
Fair
And honest
The boys respected him
The girls adored him
But no one
Loved him more
Than his devoted mother
Her
James
As she would call him
Loved
Her
Son
Would set
And shine
In her eyes
He was the sun
He had no shadows
And if he did
She would step in
And block out his darkness

Your dad was over the moon
When he was selected to do a school puppet show
With Jimmy
He got to practice
In his house
He was on center stage
With Jimmy
He was a musketeer
And a puppeteer

Ha ha
He he
Silly old Joey
Can’t see me

These acting lines still play across
The stage of your dad’s memories

James

Left school
At the age of fifteen
One school term before your dad did
He got a job as a clothing department salesman
It was Blackler’s Department Store
The same store
In which George Harrison once worked in
In fact George may have worked with James

Back

To the news about

Jimmy

Had been poorly
For some time
Now
He stayed home all day
Bedridden in the downstairs parlor
Weak
His frail body
Blanched into an emaciated shell
Pale
And pallid
His sallow skin sank into the ribs of his skeletal shell

Fading away
He was sent to Walton Hospital
Leukemia
Struck
With sadness
Your dad was devastated
He wanted so much to visit him
But he was not allowed to
His health had dropped
Like a landslide
All too fast
And much too sudden
An avalanche
Of emotions fell upon your dad
Hopeless
And helpless
He could do nothing
But send him wishes and gifts
With the condolence of his heartbroken mother
To whom he did visit

In time
A short time
After
He died
At the young age of sixteen
Your dad touched death
For the first time
He stepped into Thompson’s Funeral Parlor
Viewing
Jimmy
All he could recall
Were his sallow hands
Porcelain
Motionless
In white satin
Clasped
Sculptured with relief
Translucent
Albescent
Resting hands
Embossed onto the top of a charcoal dress suit
A cameo of carrara
Halcyon
Veins
Becalmed
Under the hyaline surface of his marble skin
Silence
In motion
He sleeps
In a satin shroud of silken solitude
Resting in an open casket of ashier gold
At peace

The lids closed

On his grief-stricken mother
Grieved with abandoned pain
Lost
In an abyss of vaulted darkness
Never
Ever
Did she recover
From the youthful death
Of her beloved

James

Mrs. Person would spend her remaining days
Living
And dying
In a mausoleum of memories
Photographs of James
Walled her tomb with living death
Each day was celebrated with sadness
When her dear James died
She died that same day
With a broken heart

Years later
Young Frank
Still stood in the shadow of James
But the unseen son
Would always be at his mother’s side

A piece
Of James
Remains with your dad
Jimmy’s box may have been small
But his pieces were large
The lid had closed on James
But his life was illustrated with love
Jimmy did not have many pieces in his small puzzle box
But with the few
He touched many
And his piece
Will always be larger than life

In time
The lid will close
On all of us
The last piece of the puzzle will be placed
Leaving
Death to fill in the void of its completeness
Resting
It serves time
In the solitude of silence
Where it waits
To be opened once again

Children

We do not determine
The number of pieces we will get in our lives
Nor do we know how many pieces
Of the puzzle we have been given
We do define the content
By shaping the events
We fill in the spaces of our own lives
Creating
Uncharted vignettes
Into the context of time
We fill the voids with living memories

You

Are also pieces
Of someone else’s puzzle
Paramount
Or in sequential
You would have touched
Someone else’s life
So touch
With love
And forgive
With understanding
Because you are a piece of their puzzle

Cherish
And cluster
Those special pieces
And place them into your life
With love
Interlock their memory
With the present
Treasure it
Seize the day
Because you cannot return
The pieces you were given
Those pieces will always remain with you
Only in death
Will we see
The cover of our lives
So remember
Regrets are the tombstones of the heart

Theme from a Summer Place, Percy Faith, 1960

The Navy Boy

Five
Months had passed
He had packed his last loaf
And delivered his last round of bread

Cheers
A toast
A round for his mates
He had packed in the bakery
And he is off to see
The world

Not a loafer
He had risen to his quest

A Horse is a Horse of Course

With voice
Unbroken
He would harness his handicap
Using horse sense
He saddled his voice
Until he was hoarse broken

Nagging the navy recruiter
To get off his high horse
And make some allowance
By weighing in the fact
The odds were good
For a boy like that

His voice may sound like a gelding
But he has the spirit of a purebred
Forget his handicap
And let the young lad run his lap

Scratching his balding head
While licking his flowery lip
Moving his blinders
He reigned in the whip
Side saddling the issue
Because of the young lad’s hearty plea
And himself once a former steward
Having gone to sea
He felt that this lad could be a winner
So I will enter his plea
So take it from the horse’s mouth
Back up your bags
Because Seabiscuit you’re off
To sea

Victory

At the age of fifteen
He was off to sea
Thanks to the Jockey
He was in the position
To join the Merchant Navy

Six
Weeks had passed
He had finished his training
Now a commissariat