Banana Boy.

I could tell you a sad tale,
I could tell you a success story.
Both true in every detail,
each with tears and glory.
The sad tale doesn’t end differently,
the success one starts from the same view
because, it’s the way a story is told
that casts its different shades and hue.

In one tale, I’m lonely and frightened,
Mother, a distant unknown;
her unbearable burdens are lightened by my absence
from her and her new man’s home.
On the other side of the looking glass
I’m free, running loose and wild,
no guilt to prick at a conscience
barely formed in an unwanted child.

In one story I have no attachments
and I’m no-one’s priority.
In the other there are kids all around
each as insouciant as me.
We played and we learned and we grew together,
some leaving some returning, some new.
We betrayed and spurned and screwed each other,
sometimes deceiving, other times ‘blood brother’ true.

Yes, there were times of anguish
but they only lasted ten years or so.
There were times when a weapon I’d brandish
to cut out of the charade on show.
A child in a world of children
there were dangers, thrills and fun,
OK, the adults were watching
but at any time – they can only listen to one.
Meanwhile we others made our own world
of princesses and brave super-men
who could fly from the boughs of the conker tree –
straight into a hospital bed!

The home was massive; a magnificent mansion, and heirloom,
bequeathed by a benefactor.
I wonder if he ever imagined kids wreathed in room after room
their tears, their prayers, their laughter?
Each child, a private battler
against odds fixed and stacked,
fighting like a drunken, blind boxer
confused ‘tween defence and attack.

The myriad of passing counterfeit mothers
all cared for a second or so.
Then disappeared to make their own lives
as we wondered; and watched them go.
Then rejoiced at another victory
another Mummy repelled;
I guess some of us wondered
why the real one was withheld.
Nah!! That’s the beauty of childhood
we could shape the world as we pleased
who needs family anyway?
We had each other – and the conker trees.

If this story feels like a sad one
I’ve not explained as well as I could
how my childhood gave me freedom
to think, to feel without “should”.
I learned to watch – see beyond what I saw,
make bold interpretations of young lives vivid and raw.
I was witness to wounds tore open, some will never have healed;
brothers and sisters forsaken and lonely, unsure when to fight or yield.

I truly believe – each wound I concealed
made me tougher inside.
I’ll tell you, when I can, if I’m now a strong man
or merely an overgrown child.
I was lucky, lucky lucky…
Though the only black face in the whole of the valley,
like an errant raisin in a bowl of rice;
raising my head, alone, I looked good in a current of white.
Though for many such loneliness feels like doom,
to me it was more a classroom
where I learned to fire my imagination,
shed dross and find life’s golden bloom.

And so, a story to finish
from those days so long ago.
A rumour had spread around my school
about a boy I thought I should know.
So when I got back to Barnardo’s
I said to a mother, whose name I forget,
“I’ve heard there’s a black boy in our class
but I haven’t seen the bugger yet!”