The Green Boy

Body of baby boy found at recycling warehouse

Yorkshire Post, 3 May 2012

The temperature has fallen, a chill

in the air, in there, in the shed.

A relief to be spared a while the pulsing

abdominal heat radiating in from its corrugated skin,

its girded roof for once higher than the stench

of decaying organic matter that clings to everything,

from probiotic yogurt pots to unrinsed TV dinner trays,

distended cartons of pineapple juice

primed to explode, to go off, to go bang,

in the crusher, in the furnace, in the long

malodorous, monotonous night.

Let the fireworks begin. Stick to the matter

that matters, the four-poster cats, the inside-out turkeys,

the needles and nappies and insanitary towels.

Keep the green belt rolling but fish out anything alien,

anything like that — what is that?

It looks like a sausage, a big one, a knack or a bratwurst,

a fat German waste of good porker.

There's no call for delicacy, no time for archeology,

but a sharp tug reveals that it's joined to a motherlode.

There’s nothing else for it then: grab hold.

Christ, it's as bloated as a floater

and won’t budge, stuck fast in the process

of its reincarnation. Dig with the one hand, heave with the other,

try not to see what you’re seeing, to look into unblinking eyes

through a skein of flies, or to hear from those bloated lips

a silent infant cry forever craving its mother’s breast.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet