The Office On Serious Street Poem by Kevin Kiely

1.
Once upon a see-saw moving high and low
outside the office on serious street
the child is staring at a rainbow

bars on the windows, the bank-safe is locked
it looks like a steam engine with a ship's wheel
the red burglar alarms are primed and cocked

a story-book hand points on the wall
the doors with gleaming glass are locked
it is cold near the brass handles in the hall

here come policemen with their guns
across the chessboard tiles
and out the door the child runs

crammed into school among the horde
the teacher's music is a bunch of keys
how many slates make up the blackboard


2.
his mother returns from Gamage's
after coffee with the ladies. String
is tied around parcels for everything

the kitchen is a shop inside a museum
a jam factory and a food factory
a playhouse, a bakery, and a party

his father is talking on the big black phone
and smoking. The golden letters
on the door can spell his name

the mahogany desk, the ink-wells
like eggshells, pens: red, green and black
the blotting paper is a map

with a leather triangle at each corner.
In rolls the starched-white paper
and oily carbon, the sound of the high-backed

typewriter—keys are pressed like gunshots
they echo through the ticking clocks
here is the mail van in circus red

here is candy from the seaside red
here is red ceiling wax that melts and burns


3.
Out in the yard, evening glints with lights
in jagged glass, the high wall has such teeth―
cheque-book stubs and a match ignites

in the rusty barrel that stinks of petrol
a genie quivers in the smoke and flame
the child sees apples on every tree

the Carrig-a-Rede is a hammock across the sea
his brother and sister know Hansel and Gretel
and the little match girl goes to heaven

Humpty Dumpty falls down laughing
hit by a snowball made of icing sugar
the office is high on serious street

half-frosted glass on three windows
the name in look-through letters
childhood is a pop-up book

it is a public park falling into a time-tunnel
as the carousel takes you around and around
look at this pop-up book of the town

an old man with a white beard
wears a red dressing gown
a tall tree in front of the Central Hotel

is growing coloured lightbulbs
for Christmas and all shall be well
through the smoke the genii swells

from the chimney pots on the roof.
‘Stop your dreaming, ' say the church bells
a silver crown all angels wear

the office on serious street flashes in lightning
and what disturbs you in the night
and why were you born according to fate

in the six sectarian counties of hate
the Giant's Causeway toy is flung away
the brown hexagonal coins are falling

the rain is always falling
it comes with thunder and is frightening
the magical tree is taken away