The Man Who Dressed Up as a Boy
His childhood was an ordinary chaos,
like blood on a carpet.
His parents used to have one of those rugs
that were designed to be imperfect;
somewhere the symmetry would break
because only God can create perfection.
He felt a lot like that rug.
His memories of that time are a scattering
of glass shards.
There was the time he climbed duffle-coated and wellingtonned
into his father’s hospital bed after the heart attack –
clearer, though, is the spectrum of a bruise, the crack
of the nearside wing mirror
as the car drunk-swerved into another,
the blustering gambit of divorce.
He grew bigger, he understood
that a blessing can also be a millstone,
he learnt to play chess,
he bought one of those rugs.
John Newson has a wide variety of interests, ranging from architecture to zoology, and a corresponding inability to focus on any single task. His writing is an attempt to achieve such focus. He lives in Wiltshire where he enjoys spending time in the countryside with his wife and two children.
John has work published with Allegro Poetry, Avatar Review, Obsessed With Pipework, The Lyric, The Moth and others.