O, Matricide

Disappeared two years  
and counting now,
lost in your mire of drugs
and bad acquaintances,
 
a candidate for trash TV
if ever there was one -
 
MY MOTHER WON’T STOP SMOKING CRACK -
 
(perhaps the producers would lend me a
tracksuit, XXXL, to go with my jagged teeth
and ten quid haircut).
 
I smile and sing c’est la vie,
you’re just an ill woman,
not really to blame.
 
But pity, I’ve realised, is finite,
and crumbles underneath the weight
of sensing wrong once done to you,
of seeing the cartoon boy you were,
scared and fragile, and allowing yourself
to hate.
 
I still see your face
in the fire of that long-ago place,
Dickensian and almost fairy tale
in its grim grotesquerie. The flat.
Peeling walls and tinpot bath
beside the open flames.
You burned my hands.
I seem to have a Spaniard’s tan
just in those parts, between the knuckles.
 
O, Matricide,
the concept makes me think:
would I truly, madly care
if you smoked too much and died?
 
St. Paul had his spirit fried
by the blinding truth of life,
and now a Damascene moment
strikes me, entirely selfish,
meaningless to anyone but I,
but frying all the same:
 
that you only ever loved me
when it was convenient.