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