Raw cement floor, flaking, damp walls
two gas rings reeking of rancid cabbage.
A piss-stained sink, outdoor loo was full of rats,
the pervading smell of unwashed bodies and silent despair.
A basement kitchen never visited by summer sun,
always grey afternoon, no one laughed here,
if they did it was a drunken snigger,
more like a scream of suffering
that no longer asked why life had to be like this,
nor had the strength to do anything about it.
This was a kitchen of poverty,
slices of week old bread with margarine
and shut up if you didn’t want it.
It was here, in this kitchen of gloom,
that my father hung one morning and mother swore,
hitting his inert body with a ladle till it swayed,
before putting her coat on to go fetch the police.
Left me alone with him
and two slices of bread with brown sugar on.
Cried when they came take him to the morgue
and me to a home which had sunlight coming in
through a curtained kitchen window.