Friend Whose Parents Were Hippies
While my house in the early 80's
yawned drum machines and synthesisers,
you fell in
with a San Franciscan set,
a house green
with photosynthesis; violins
aah-ing
in the sun of the dining room table.
Ten four-year-old fingers
learned to sing.
When ten,
we socialised.
No one told us
that cucumbers on the eyes
do bugger all, really —
that masks
won't help skin cough
out its
toxins
(only inner organs do that,
smokeless in flat little bellies)
A decade
of silliness
and we're allowed to be drunk,
small, small price.
We're too scared to cut our hair.
Atoms remain
split like ends.
Everyone
thinks their age is the best, and the ugliest
but always, when we talk on the phone,
the same, fond sound of your dining room
and someone's violin
echoing,
echoing from one plastic fist
to the next.