Steve Lang - Shame

“You wouldn’t talk to your parents like that, would you? ”
Silence.
On his doughy, paste-white cheeks,
Two red dots mark the limits of his self-control,
Like emotional punctuation.
The skin below his eyes is puffy, bloated-
That dirt yellow colour of fading bruises.
In the dull eyes, a menacing miasma veils
The place where his conscience lies
Battered like a discarded toy on a wintry Lincolnshire beach.
Then, like those sudden, frightening clearings in thick fog,
I see:
Contempt for my spurious suburban assumptions;
Fissile white-hot fury at the unfairness of the truth-
The booze-fuelled bursts of violence in the grimy house with its grey, cracked
pebble dash and shanks of yellow grass
Between over-spilling bins and broken concrete;
The screaming, the puking, the heart-stopping dunch
Of a body against a wall;
The relentless temper fed by crap food, cheap cider and bad weed.
The cloying stench of self-loathing-self-pity.
Then, across those eyes, flashing delicate,
More briefly than the lowering thundercloud lit from within by lightning-
Shame.
He blinks hard and looks away.
I look down.
Silence.

Steve Lang

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/shame-51/