Summary GR12 ENG POEM (What life is really like)

WHAT LIFE IS REALLY LIKE

You need to toughen up

my father would complain

when I was small

I ought to take you to see

chickens having their heads

chopped off.

That’d teach you

what life is really like.



He’d seek me out

when one of his pigeons

- crazed for home or

Mad with terror from a

roaming hawk

– would tumble into

the loft

mutilated by

wire or beak.



I was the one made to

clench my palms round

its pumping chest,

to keep it still while

my father’s hairy fingers stitched

its garotted throat

angrily to rights again.




You see life is a fight for survival

, he’d shout, forgetting

he was not lecturing his students

or giving his inaugural address

You gotta roll with the punches



i waited and waited for that bitter

roughness to spy me and circle

in to land

years and years

of flinching anticipation until

the day I came home from hospital



and my father dressed my wound.



Easing with practiced hands

the drip from my bulldozed chest

he renewed the plaster in breathing silence

never speaking never

once saying



Life’s a bastard

Toughen up.




ABOUT THE PEOM