Potty Wielding

I threw out all of my childhood memories and I'll never get over it

although I'd prefer to forget it.

It's been broken anyway and what it could have been is gone.

But we are all hamburgers on the conveyor belt of life

We have different fillings for what is right for us

And there's no point trying to stuff a gherkin where it won't fit.

The better self I could have been if my dad had stayed and taught me to paint life the way it took him so long to see

In thick bright paint you can see from the moon

As a 3 year old reclining on a newspaper cutting I expected too much from life

and this can be seen in the nude pictures, camera reels of public urinating, running around London in a fairy outfit clutching a potty

Eyeing, smiling, challenging the camera.

Parents who made games under the stars running down the Dorset beach

Throwing shoes and screaming in the morning.

Working mother, all short bob, shoulder pads, harp broach resting on heart lapel

I think that's gone somewhere as well,

Carelessly gone,

It's where I get my carelessness from.

And all that fierceness and memory I still hold in my heart

Of handsome parents, cigarettes and wine surrounded by London celebrities plum trees

Cracks into brooding by windows

Anger and whispers behind doors

A roving gypsy father that I've now become

Living in a flat above a chip shop

On couches of girlfriends and famous people that bought his art

And me sleeping with mum in an empty bed.

And all that heartbreak was part of what I am now -

Always waiting

For the change and the goodbye

After the age of 7 is a time I choose to forget

From that there is nothing left

But fragments and pain and worthlessness

Not worth describing in words but buried deep and acknowledged in my heart and

What I could have been

But that potty wielding warrior is

still there too, eyeing the camera, challenging you.