I never thought that loud mouthed, smoking teenage mums would inspire me .... but they have:

Follow:

I watch an uneducated child
Scream stinging profanities at her child.
Too loud to be heard
Too harsh, too regular
To be an effective deterrent.

She carries with her the toolbox of parental guidance
But reaches straight to the bottom
Bypassing smaller tools she goes for the hammer

And uses it forcefully
And wonders why the wood splinters.

The child’s child cries and screams
From a hollow inside.
But her screams are heard by deaf ears.

Louder profanities and a red palm just sting more.
They add to the vacuum within
And child’s child splinters.
In last week’s clothes she splinters.
Takes solace in the cold sausage roll that is her breakfast.

Not once does her mother drop the hammer
Or the cigarette from the corner of her downturned mouth
As child’s child is dragged by frightened loyalty

Dragged through trails of passive smoke
Through grease stale perfume and last night’s lager scent

She is dragged.
Three feet behind a mother who doesn’t care.

A mother who will protest her love, loud and shrill
At the slightest self perceived injustice.
A mother who cares too late
Too little
If at all.

A bemused and disgusted bystander swallows their stiff upper lip and speaks
To me met with
“Fuck off!”

The splintered, hollow child’s child follows.
She follows.
Follows.
And several generations of children’s children follow.