Image: Unsplash, downloaded (https://unsplash.com/photos/4zXn3TjVTcA) 01.05.2022.
Mum gone to sneeze cotton
while me and house
shared empty my feet
dangled over that mornings
sash windows stretched out
onto the carpet until
legs eager frustrated
decided to escape
from a nothingness
and walk me up
to school for morning tea
in the boiler cellar
with Mr Crompton
Benefactor station
Nykoping bus station
this side of ‘tidningskiosk’
reading out the days
news headlines
where Liz all five foot
bohemian naturalist artist
who funded me
and my autism to Sweden
breaking the sound barrier with
“Peter”
shout skittles over
travellers bunched
together waiting to push their
every inch onto the bus
back to Stockholm
when Liz complete stranger
hugs me
May 1993
i know that shirt
hanging by a thread
with that drip of blood
it was on the line outside
orphanage in Lipik
bombed machined gunned
out of all recognition
its same shirt
now look all
these years later
still crumpled up
like that little boy
who’d witness his parents
being executed
that’s his shirt
i knew i’d seen it before
Author about Himself: My name is Peter Street. I am a widely published author and poet.
Until I was 32 my literary age was that of a 6th grader. After a serious spinal injury I began to take everything seriously, including my education. I failed at everything, but I had found poetry. The poet Matt Simpson suggested I write my extraordinary life, especially my years as a gravedigger /exhumer in poetry form. Two years later: 1992 My first book: “Out of the Fire” was published. Twelve months later I was invited to read my poetry on BBC Greater Manchester Radio, where I eventually became writer in residence. 1993 while working for BBC I hitched a lift to the Balkans war as a war poet. I have been writer in residence in Cat A and B prisons, schools, Greater Manchester Health Authority. Three more books of poetry followed. I have been funded and promoted to read my poetry in America, Sweden and Iceland. My memoir “Goalkeeper” (spondylux) about growing up in the 1950’s before autism was made known. My autism has made me who I am.
Kommentare