BOX

BOX

The speaker in the poem is upset, perhaps bitter, but does s/he practice what s/he preaches?  Is the speaker equally carrying out a boxing exercise with words or is s/he merely being ironic at the end?  If s/he is carrying out a "boxing" exercise, has it been successful? Thanks to Cassie and Chris for picking up on the sparring connotation of the title, perhaps a contest that is still continuing, a battle far from over.

Box

You bought a storage box,

From Amazon UK,

Delivered with due expedition,

It arrived the following day,

And in the same way,

Without delay,

You boxed up the corpse,

Of yesterday, with

The usual debris:

Souvenirs of visits,

Cinema and theatre tickets,

The odd item of wear,

Scribbled notes on beer mats,

With lots and and lots of X kisses,

Photographs and postcards,

English Heritage pens and pencils,

National Trust rulers and stencils,

Stuff from CAMRA outings,

Music gig mementos,

Gathered and grouped without fanfare,

And last and by all means least           -  me

Dumped unceremoniously.

We “things” found our final home,

Lying in darkness and under a lid for a sky,

Sad and silent,

The long oblong goodbye,

Then you locked us up for good,

For eternity or whatever lasts longer,

And hid away the key like you could,

Hide a memory.

In reality,

You buried me,

To conceal me from the other,

You had taken behind my back,

I’m sure just an innocent case of overlap,

A slight, and easily forgivable mishap,

One of many  “lovers” it would seem,

I was trundled and bundled away,

So not to reveal your usual

Modus operandi,

AKA, being ultra sly

Poor guy.

Once the dirty deed was done, you

Heaved your box to the boot of your car,

Hearsed me over to your parents’ home,

Dumped me in the box room there,

For interment until the judgement day,

But the judgement day had come and gone,

I judged you a long time ago and

Boxes cannot hold the soul,

Or contain a life you sought to control,

And bury away:

The spirit roars,

The spirit soars,

This spirit always roars, is free

From any form of captivity.

Throughout your life and your questionable past,

A number of questions I would ask:

Over the years, every day,

How many boxes have you filled,

Similarly, rapidly,

Sociopathically,

How many have you filled then buried away?

How long before he goes the same way,

Measuring him up for his judgement day?

Will you box the mug with the red Hornby train,

The one bought him with the birthday voucher,

I'd given you?  

Classy.

Will that be treated just the same as

My love letters and all that they shamefully revealed?

Will all your next relationships be signed off and sealed?

Will that mug be boxed away like this one was?

What is a box but a denial of a past,

And a symbol of a time that could not last,

The people and the objects you may entomb,

But who is really boxing whom?

Don’t bury failure, learn from it instead,

Embrace the life experience to help you move ahead,

Or just keep filling boxes until you're dead

And placed in the final box of all:

Unhinged, unwanted, empty, plain and  small.

Closure.

© Stephen Evans, July 2014