scrapman

scrapman is a deathman

he wheels aroundtown and

knows its every alley

like his daggered eartips

like his cruciblecart,

bolted to the wastewagon,

like the detritus soup

smouldering in its sunken palm,

the magmalather of your fridge

whose brothers and sisters

left home and

lined pavements

slumped and ajar with the failure of their freeze

to be swallowed in the ultimate heat,

and defeated,

and the dishwasher,

and the wicker-chair bested by the outdoor beanbag,

suds rupturing like popped corn in the crucible.

The rockhorse ridden by a century of mothers

melts to a rodent

the crisp

noxious

viscosity

of age and varnish

now Vermin

for the scrapman