Seasoned Lines
At the bottom of a dead end road,
a child slips through steel walls
onto a disused railway line,
home to stray dogs and berry fields.
Under midsummer sun the child harvests dreams.
Soon, the mother will return from the factory.
The mother is in the jam factory;
at the end of a no through road,
grafting for silken catalogue dreams.
Over the plant's perimeter walls,
are the school playing fields
she'd hop scotched, to work the line.
The father, an illiterate factotum, was towing the line.
He was on the run, when the factory
caught him; living in a caravan on asphalt fields.
He said freedom was on a toll road,
but no-one heard him moan, behind prison walls.
His youth fades like her paper dreams.
The child hungabout, but was inclined to pipe dreams
and wanted more than life on a plum line:
My name grows on the vine of graffiti walls,
it won't wither, like the spoils on the factory
floor. I am gifted! Said the kid at the end of the road,
home-grown, sown on the city's brown fields.
The mum clocked up years on time's killing fields,
for a gift, boxed and gilded like her dreams.
The dad ploughed on, hitching along a one way road
and still, neither had made it to the half way line.
Her name was on a carriage clock from the factory
and his etched on his cell's wailing walls.
All life stories are bisected by walls;
beyond which, are the promises of open fields.
The child accepted, we all do time in a factory,
leaving behind kiddish games and dreams.
One way or another, we all walk the line
and yield up the sweet pickings of Spring's silk road..
But beyond the factory, beyond the streets, beyond our bruised dreams,
there's an evergreen coppice, grown on the story line of Anfield Road,
strewn with amaranthine children on strawberry fields, forever beyond walls
- Cheyelle Omar
Mission Statement
This is/was my latest composition, it was almost universally panned by the people who I wrote it for. - The way I see it, it's like this, when you stand on the shoulders of giants (and the people of the Kop ARE giants) they got every right to turn around and say, "…And who the fuck are you!"
The father believed in freedom (that knowledge was his gift to the child). The mother believed in the child, why-the-fuck-else would she have spent all that time sloggin' her guts out in a jam factory? The child had self-belief, so despite everything, the parents did something right. And the author, well, the author believes in the Kop.
COPYRIGHT ©2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: CHEYELLE OMAR
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