there is a possibility that
my family is nuclear.
(oh dear).

Mymymymy, says the voice box of the underachiever.
When will you ever learn? groans the mouth of the know-it-all, the show-it-all.

(I see two slits of skin called lips, pulsating&spitting
I hear sounds of screeching, hissing&droning
I taste roasted garlic inside my neck
I smell it seeping through my skin
I feel cold.)

Big boned baby Bertie is gurgling and blowing bubbles to Phoenix the cat.
The cat I predict is about to flick the baby
(And I know I’ll just sit and I’ll watch).

Something is tapping on the windowpane,
My mother the woman who encapsulates so much pain.
She got raped at seventeen, laughed and called him ‘mean,’
(And I wonder how she does it).

I watch as she patters around like a moth in the dark, hitting the walls.
Oops! Ow! Oops! Aah! Oop la! Ma?
She smiles with pink lipstick as she skitters around the soulless rooms she lives in.
Mymymymy, she’ll say. (Cry I think. Cry! Cry! Cry!)
Like a lie in a court, frightened of the dungeon
My mother is playing for her freedom.
When will you ever learn? (Says the voice that I know is her keeper).

As cumulonimbus clouds break their swollen bellies over my face,
Phoenix the cat looks unhappy.
But Bertie the baby, oh he’s a happy clappy chappy.
My mother the bird has fainted inside
And my father is eating his breakfast.
(And I chuckle to myself, as I sit in the rain),
Only the English find this sort of set up. (And I don’t know if that’s untrue).
(I listen, as a mob of conspiracy theories roar into my brain
Gunning down the innocence I never had.
And I wonder if I have any swallow me’s left),
One in da mornin’ said the fatty old nurse
And one in da evening littl’un ser. (But I take them all the time, twelve in fact in a row)

Did you know, that I know, (even though my heart has burst),
That there will always be the swallow me’s
(As I know that never again shall I sit on my dad’s arthritic knobbed knees).
Because that heart that burst, hurt.
I am like a worm out of dirt
I wriggle and writhe in a world so inhospitable
I don’t fit in at all.
But I’m thirsty need a lager
Fed up of this same old saga.
Oh natter natter, repetitive old chatter.
(I think I may be mad now)
chewing the cud like a pink spotted cow.
-But how and when did this happen?

possibly because,
my family is nuclear.
(oh dear).