Joan is my Mother’s Name, poem by Craig Teatime
Channel: Story Telling
Date: 2020-05-30

Joan is my Mother’s Name, poem by Craig Teatime 

Joan Is My Mothers Name

The night of our life,
and the home that could be,
it’s mostly just a room,
with enough beds for a group of sleazy english lads,
or the accounting department catching a weekend off,
to quench that age old ambition,
of a weekend bender abroad,
ha ha see,
It’s less of an apartment and more of a factory,
Our air B&B.

I’ve heard of the Czech spring rising
— Until the tanks closed in on those soft children 
and the Vltava was stripped of all it's blue,
closing tight and killing any chance of life, 
the way those who can close- 
do,
yet still for us,
this is Prague in Autumn,
the music from the greasy bar rising up to the window sill that’s 
broken and doesn't close,
mind the showers cracked tray!
skin oils cold on bed clothes.
The host knows,
but whats there to say 
it was cheap,
But what is there to say, when only a few niggling guests stand in the way,
of renting it as is and making a killing,
and that killing is you and me.

She turns on her side,
there is silence now for a while,
the traditional Czech band below has faded out out into the night.
I close the window,
it hits the latch on the third time,
recline and then it’s,

she and me, the woman I call Mum.
Today snarls at each other outside the park,
The wheezing related to the pressure of the arteries of your heart,
Just look- as you show how your ankles swell,
"oh well", I answer,
„Oh well“,
Tired of your life,
tired of you weighing on me,
why cant you just see me,
and how I just need a moments silence.

But its just a little souvenir,
“so go on buy it,
I'll wait for you outside,”
and we do,
me and you,
as soldiers,
who saw the bare sky towards Constantinople,
huddled in the mud, put words to their wonder,
wondering: Why do we fight?
Boys armed to teeth in trenches ,
Why do we fight at all?
Our love story mother
like that of Romeo and Juliet,
Verona, Mantua, Montague, Capulet,
but the parent child tale is more poignant yet
You who dies first who gave life first to me.

And now on your side,
your nightdress,
the dry skin of your feet,
there but buried under wrinkled fold and pleat,
I take out my headphones,
look at you,
shy to look too long,
and now there is silence,
and the night has come,
and me and the lamplight,
and I your son.






Berlin based poet
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