Karl said, let’s go and pinch clothes off the washing lines
Laughing I was like, yer right; sounds great!
Of course I went along
You got to be part of it, or you’re out of it
So we went skipping through streets in the winter’s dark
Ducking, diving, grabbing, laughing
Trying to find family’s clothes to replace the ones we didn’t have
We jumped over fences sneaked round corners
Laughed our hearts out when we saw Karl appear with a sheep skin rug
We were like, what the fuck do you want with that?
It didn’t matter
We just wanted to grab anything
Fill the empty fucking hole
The cupboard for supper time wasn’t open for a good few hours yet
So like a tornado we twisted around in a swirl
of stolen clothes
It was fantastic
For one night we didn’t give a fuck
Laughed, dived, ducked
Scuffed out the chalked lines of abuse
that were often scrawled on the pavement
Funny you would think I would remember what they wrote exactly,
but I don’t
I love this poem. I saw you read it in Stockton library. It really stayed with me and remember what poetry is all about.
Thank you Arwen
Wow! What a powerful poem. Going to check out more of Sky’s work now.
Thank you Dorothy, i hope you enjoy my other stuff as much 🙂
Really identified with this poem Sky – when my big bro’ arrived at Children’s Home age 12 my Pa and Ma (houseparents) handed him pair of pyjamas and he didn t know what they were (they later adopted him – hence the ‘bro’ bit).
Thanks Babs for sharing that. When people can identify with my poetry like this,
it can really helps me through those’ troubled’ times in writing 🙂