ThIRD BOY (DICKY)

'...he’ll never forget as he paddles blind home
through the weeping end of the world.'
                   —Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood

Each night,
on the darkened stage
behind my moon-burnt eyelids
I re-live it:

standing wet on the cobbles
in my patched-up pants
as the shrill girls giggle
and gaggle around me,
asking for kisses or pennies
to buy treats from Cockle Street
sweet-shop.

And I, refusing.

And always refusing.

Because my mother said
I mustn’t kiss girls:
they torment and torture
young boys like me
– but really
because Tad couldn’t keep
his grubby fingers from the jars
of the wild hovel women
who live upon the hills.

And so, ’neath the wood,
I refused to smack lips
with the village bike
(as she became known)
and ran
wee
wee
wee
all the way home
like a porking pig
squealing for his mother’s pink teat.

And you ask how it makes me feel?
​
It makes me feel
as bitter as citrus skin,
as abandoned as bagged cats,
but as awakened as I will ever be,
understanding that the almighty omniscient
could have written a different part
for poor Dicky,
but didn’t.

Published in That Lone Ship  (2018)
Available to buy from Parthian Books
Video recorded for The Crunch Issue 0 (October, 2015)