Long-dead Sirens

[Guest]

[Pater]

How lucky or unlucky is it,
being able to trace back
through incidents from memory,
with other-world feelings
ticking their place in the myths
you think rotate your adult life,
when you hide them away
from the seasons of others yet enjoy,
the cocoon like a womb they bring?
Am I the child or the man?

I loved the rhyming slang "cycle path"
for psychopath when aged ten,
hearing of James Taylor's breakdown,
yet wanted to heal him;
was I a disordered boy?
Teenaged I did sport with a mix
of real dread yet slyness;
played Catholicism and violence.
Now I get jolts from my childhood
out of the blue. Something happened -
to only me back then.

by Pater