The Electric Boy - A Terza Rima

The electric boy twitched and danced,
His sister, frightened, stared in silence .
Fire and lightning round his body, lanced.

His teeth, clacking in a morbid cadence,
Limbs flailing like a fiery mill.
The boy a burning dervish out of balance.

Powered down, the street, and houses, still.
Screams pounding at the air in waves
He lies, rigid, beyond slats of steel until,

The girl batting at him with a stave,
Blackened by energy, washed by flames,
Helpless, tries to pull him from the grave

Mother's running, crying, shrieking, James.
Past the sign, marked on it , "No Ball Games".


Its funny how childhood memories seem to come back once you start this creative writing lark. The poem is based on an incident that I was told about as a child, at length, by my parents. A boy who lived in our street (but whom I didn't know personally as he was a bit younger) climbed over the rails of the electricity sub-station his older sister was there too and tried to pull him away from the machinery with a bit of fencing. He was, according to my Father, burned to a crisp. I used to walk past that generator on the way to my Aunts and the hum of the wires was a very eerie sound . Needless to say I gave it a wide berth. I still have an image, which I didn't manage to work into the poem, of a black and white plastic ball, melted half to slag on top of one of the machines. I think they left it there as a warning.