"All the things that dragged me here are tangled up around the pier"
-Tom Waits
(for no man...)
However, it waits for me...
9 YEARS PAST, SOMEWHERE NEAR GREENHITHE
TOYING WITH THE REMNANTS OF MY TRICYCLE
IN THE MOMENTS OF BRIEF RESPITE FROM CONTAINER FREIGHT
(for then, I was Human Cargo)
I glimpsed England for the first time:
seeing the bridge, spanning the estuary
I steered the ship home, wheel clutched between eager hands.
Beneath the water pulls strange threads.
Flotsam on the tide are we.
Invisible currents:
MONEY
DRUGS
VICE
POWER
CONTROL
VICE
POWER
CONTROL
Elemental forces, dragging us across the world, washing us up
unwanted,
on some unlovely shore.
Me?
I was running away.
My family were running away.
2 things brought with me... the first (the wheel) you've seen...The second?
My water pistol!
Between six hour lockdowns I'd sate my thirst
with squirts... it was close.
We scratched at the containers rusting sides.
They had to let us out.
But we were too near to the shore
our protests were ignored
the air grew stale
stifled and choked, a frog in my throat..
and then
A RUSH OF COLD ESTUARY STINK!
Chill night stench swept in as the flung open the container door.
Greedily, we inhaled.
-suffused with an orange glow, bi-sected by the bridge-
smiled its hello.
I ran to greet her, to stretch my aching limbs.
I ran to the prow to steer the ship home.
"SO THIS IS ENGLAND! WONDERFUL, MAGICKAL ENGLAND!"
A solitary Eddie Stobart crawled across the bridge.
~~~~~~%&*(
My shoe fell in the water. It slipped off.
I, fearing mother's anger,
and engulfed with shame
at arriving in my new country
with one shoe off and one shoe on
Jumped into the dark water..
And so the ship that brought me here
left me tangled up, beneath the pier.
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