Adrian Street, The Early Years

I was fighting for my life even before I was born,

nearly strangled at birth by my umbilical cord.

By four I was re-enacting Little Bighorn,

hunting Custer through the hills of Gwent, while Dad

was hunted through Singapore by the Japanese.

I gathered pieces of downed German bombers

to build my own plane and scour the Valleys

for the Sioux tribe that’d make me a brave, while my father

prayed the days away in Changi Jail. Our air-raid

shelter was the heavy kitchen table we’d squat

under – me, Mam, and big brother, Ter, who’d

beat me senseless when Mam went to her cleaning job.

I never found Crazy Horse or got made a brave

but I learned how to live as nobody’s slave.