A Heath-Robinson Solution For A Broken Heart

I’m Over You Like Clockwork

In the dankness of the cellar

where the dust isn’t rude but there to be expected,

I’d uncovered a battered brown suitcase

a treasure chest of short trousered memories.

Inside was a clockwork train set that Beecham

would have axed because the track went in a circle;

never went there but always came back.

A Meccano set, thrown into a scrapyard box

of wheels, nuts and bolts, and incomplete robots.

Crashed Dinky cars that had flown from walls

or mangled into each other like stock car jousters,

a rusty penknife, deflated leather football,

ripping yarns from torn Boys Own Annuals.

That night, on the kitchen table,

with tiny spanners in my large fingers,

I stripped out the clockwork motor from the train

and used the Meccano to build a framework

for its new housing.  With the rusty penknife,

that I had honed on the stone step by the back door,

(like I had done all those years before)

I performed open heart surgery.  Transplanted

my broken heart with this new clockwork replica.

I stitched up my chest,

with the lace from the football

leaving just a tiny keyhole.  I keep the key

around my neck like a 00 gauge crucifix.    

At night,

now I no longer hear the gentle midnight sleepings

of your soft breathing, I listen to the whirring

sound of my blood going ‘round,

and feel rather proud 

of my abilities to make do and mend.

© 2007 P.A.Levy

First published by The Beat 2009