Tubes

their threat was a tube
and a starch white bed
as if I was some suffragette
in a cell that I had chosen

as if I was thin-fingered malice
with a scheme on the skin
of my knees
when I shrieked in the mouth
of the box they clapped shut

but a rat can slip
through a hole like a dime
and a Tom through any
that its shoulders can

I was out on the day
that they discharged me
thinking nothing of stairs
from the ease of the drop

I would have slept on my feet
like a horse, if I could
stood bare as St David
to weigh even-floored

what went in must stay put:
water was the devil like that
with its phantom pounds
on again off again
so that I didn’t know
who I was, or how old
I could have been eighty
or seventeen, bird-bones
and burnt teeth

I chewed and spat Hell
into a white bowl for
the taste of it
I walked twelve feet
by twelve for the burn
of it
God had plucked out His eyes
at the sight of it
but then again, I’d never
asked Him to look