Gum

 

Gum

 

If you swallow it, you’ll know.

 

Mostly, you don’t, and you shouldn’t,

but, believe me, it sometimes goes

where you don’t want, a lump,

somewhere down throat and stuck,

or maybe not, you just feel it there

before it’s off on its winding journey.

 

I’m a fan of the nicotine variety,

because she urged me to give up,

so, I’m now a smoke free zone,

call me ULEZ, if you like - I’m signed

just past the interchange for the M25,

which goes round and round, in orbit,

starts just about where you end.

 

Coffee, too - it’s bad in the morning

before you’ve eaten, causes heartburn,

dear, reduce your alcohol and stop swearing,

by calling everything ‘stupid’.

 

But even you’d get frustrated with the young

idle juveniles that they bring

from the home country; pay them less

to leave school classrooms in a mess.

 

I digress.

 

So yes, then there’s attention to your dress,

the unruffling of shirts, the zipper check,

cream upon chaffed elbows

and all the while, you’re chewing gum.

 

That’s important after quitting,

you’ll notice how exasperation builds

even after you’ve killed the smoke,

expunged most of the tar from your lungs,

some hunger for it stalks and comes.

 

Until the day, after some research,

she’s there, spelling out the side effects,

like nightmares, palpitations and dysfunctions,

snatches those packets you husbanded,

as your fortress of last resort

although you’d claim it’s nothing of the sort

or that you resent the absence.

 

I suppose she’s talking common sense,

taking away the last bastion of your defense,

marry in haste and then repent,

but gum sticks, doesn’t it?

 

And maybe in some long years hence,

she’ll look at you with mild curiosity

as she would look at an inoffensive grub,

frowning puzzled from above

at something that she used to love.

Mary

 

Mary

 

Mary was a year older than him,

an upper sixth while he was lower

enough to paint pictures of love

in broad brushstrokes imagined,

always woke from naïve dreams

before knocking and entering in.

He only ever managed shy grins

back then, but they shared time

in the common room and spoke

words that had lots in common

were pleased that they got along,

firm friends with touched bases,

dilated pupils and flushed faces

and thoughts about inner places

which age must keep close secret.

A year was all the difference then,

if he would leap then so must she,

that’s how it must have seemed,

her great wisdom and maturity

in womanhood had blossomed;

his months were only flotsam

tossed and floating in her flood.

Catholic pure and freckled skin,

he can still see her hair framing

those dark eyes and softening

her coquettish smile in porcelain,

his tongue tied moisten her lips,

then, in a desperation, he slips

one day, folded half-baked note

into her purse: ‘Ring’ it urges

in trembled, cursive ink-stroke.

There’s numbers. I can’t recall

how it goes or what was there,

but a boy, he’s waiting her call,

bitten nails, in the sallow hall

of his parents’ home, forbidden

to ever use that phone himself

on pain of charges, and the cost

is to incur his father’s wrath,

more thick ears or purple bruise

or skin marks left by tender shoe.

Waiting near, for fear they hear,

rehearsing all the lines he’d say,

still there’s no shrill bell, until

at last snatched from the cradle,

on hearing her voice, he’s unable

to mutter even a syllable. Chokes.

I still hear those sounds of throat

closing and struggled heartbeat,

think each word that retreated,

how it could not be completed.

Weak joke - didn’t put that note

he cannot sing, bring him to say,

‘Mary, I love so much, it hurts.'

He went away. Sailed off to sea,

but once, while he was on leave,

he phoned again and they agreed

to catch up to where they were.

She's coming, heart's drumming

for it's surely more than friendship,

this new man preening in her slip,

evermore clutched by time's grip,

to hum notes he always will regret

and he knows he never will forget.

Seat

 

Seat

 

On every bus throughout the land,

here’s just one seat. He stands

solitary, alone, on speaker-phone,

positioned as a noisy private stone,

like some sort of piffling henge;

low-cal, non-alcoholic brew-dog

with space for access, egress,

because all other stones have fled.

Your remaining seats are twinned,

recede backalong, take on the chin

the less room to stretch out limbs

looking on in mute suspicion

as is generally English tradition,

when cuckoos long ago have flown.

So, he lights no Norwegian fires,

sure, but maybe our seat aspires

to be the one to burn and blaze,

influence some latest craze,

be remembered till end of days,

or join other seats side by side

who stretch far and down the aisle.

But, now he is content within him,

has vacant eyes and vacant grin,

blotches all over seat coverings

and has been known to drool,

mutter warnings of loose stools,

in gay abandon scatter blithely

trash about his feet in panoply;

browns, blacks, greys - cannot be

moved upon to stow or sort,

chucked around without thought

to trip up your unwary fools.

Your edition of broadcast news

for the duration of the cruise,

in woolly hat and knitted spork,

Barnados or from Oxfam bought,

he’ll talk; when he’s done, talk,

and if he’s over, talk some more

in pitch impossible to ignore;

seats that walk, use the door

to drag his mongrel by its lead,

and release it so it could be free

then shout: ‘Run, Forest, run!’

With every sweep of second hand,

his phone will bleat and demand

our seat’s call and response;

other seats affect nonchalance,

look away, but behind their lips

are twisting teeth, biting cheeks

ignoring inner voice that speaks

of treacherous, unseemly things

until at last it comes, the bus brings

our solitary seat to a place of rest,

decides which way it would be best

to disembark his pigpen of scrap,

while peering this way and that,

step stumbling, strident grumbling

and those feckless wonderings

why nobody came to meet or greet

the trash he's strewn about his feet.

Now here is left our solitary seat,

somehow lonely and incomplete,

but, fear not! It’s never very long

before another seat comes along.

Gonegirl

 

Gonegirl

 

1991, Prom, girl gone.

Came home, something wrong

and his small flat, empty, cold,

on the hob a stew grows mold.

Two children clung, each holding

tight to his opposable hands

while wanton Winter cruel blows

like ice across the empty land.

Shivering while their questions flow

that cannot be ever answered,

and he sees no reasons,

because there are no reasons.

Just a stale trail of breadcrumbs,

inside his head, a drum thrums

and reeling left feeling numb,

until blood like percussion comes.

Someone left she’d called Bruce,

he’d met him once, twice, called truce,

a pax, had told him there’s no use

in facile sulking, had spoken truths;

arranged marriage gone south.

Or Dave, yes that was it, a mouth

set by permafrost into frigid lines:

how he’d begged her for more time,

had sobbed, cracks in his shades,

cracks in his face, cracks in façades

of the walls of his place. Girl lost.

Now, finally his turn, come to pass,

possibly it always had been this,

but, oh, how such pain would last,

walking amongst the living, dead,

thoughts of horror in his head;

he flamed like nitrogen for years,

and it left him with forever scars,

asked himself that question, why,

sought high and low for her reply,

in places where doubt multiplied.

They sometimes kept in touch,

and he only asked her this much,

she dyed his grey, withered his bloom

but her lips were sealed like tombs,

to ‘when will it be, will it be soon’?

No answer ever would be uttered;

by degrees hearts ceased to flutter,

then hearing from a friend one day

where he was now living far away,

she’d rolled her car over on a motorway,

and while he continued growing older,

could only offer a hard shoulder.

Mug

 

Mug

 

She holds it up too conspicuously,

flag-waves it - for all the bus to see:

a plastic mug, reads ‘Proud to be Me’,

in disposable beaker and straw scrawl,

blink and you wouldn’t miss it, really.

Definitely draws attention to something,

I can’t say I know what, though.

You're curious. If you lack for nothing

then what is it you know you lack

that you feel those indifferent at the back

should sit up and take note of?

I mean the mug is causing no ripple,

no applause, not even a shrug

as she’s standing, sipping, staring,

but that’s the sound of no one caring.

It’s coloured like Bridesmaid’s confetti,

and ribbons from a shook tambourine

in crimson, yellow, purple, green,

like you might see in street parades,

you’ll hear whistles, then they fade.

Or even, ‘well done for being brave’

and then passes you a free lollipop,

sugar at the dentists to cure tooth rot,

because a hole here needs filling

but don’t use raw plugs, keep drilling.

And the therapist at the support group

who told you there’s only ‘I’, not team,

now let’s build your self-esteem,

so here’s a mug, it says you’re special.

And is there actually anything in it?

Those who are the quiet majority,

passed up on, are non mug owners 

here on the bus, are not standing up

with look you hair and spectrum cups

or charity shop chunky knit bonnets.

It’s not unique that it doesn’t quite fit,

nothing special at all. Even that voice,

husky pulling sledge, is down to choice.

We’re all separate, take our own paths,

machete through the tall grasses,

most of us cry, some of us laugh,

but don’t feel the need for naff

flag day ‘proud to be me’ plastic trash,

as if everyone should want to know

any pitiful story behind the logo:

You feel the need to tell us like it is,

be the correct answer in a TV quiz

compered by some camp comedian.

Yet, here's no scoop, no hold the press,

no exclusive story, no life’s a mess

just an inkling of too much of this

self-indulgent, self-important pastiche.

Now

 

Now

 

 

Did you ever wonder if someone’s now

is the same now as yours? Or how

it could be, at the moment you leave,

that they might simply cease to be,

and it becomes ever harder to believe

that’s a person that you may’ve kissed,

or touched them while they still exist.

Only this morning, standing on a piazza

you wondered if you were even present

by the roundabout’s wheeling windmills,

absent of people wrapped against chill,

and their rackety silence of sounds still.

Does it take a scuffed puff of pigeons

pecking at falling pastry flakes in rings

around your feet and clattering wings

to bring back all those songs he sings?

Something in black - that solitary crow,

in amongst them all - but standing off,

you know there are not birds enough

in your heart, one is much like another,

interchangeable and therefore not proof

even one rook preening can look aloof.

You could always call, if you’d a number

but they change, they’re redistributed,

voices are muffled and tones are muted,

screens blink until they’re pinprick voids,

then, once you’ve hung up your phone,

it clicks, it drones, it’s instantly alone

and there’s no real way you’ll ever know.

Yes, there were once holes in his hands

but they closed, nothing in there grows,

you drilled there, you raked, you hoed,

but seeds planted are dandelion clocks

whisked away by mist; dashed on rocks

that only exist because your mind insists

it’s so. Yet even these thoughts are within

someone else’s head who’s thinking them,

therefore the distance between grows.

You’re the speck centring horizon’s brink,

and someone’s lost every time you blink,

wandered before you’d even time to think.

Did you ever wonder if someone’s now,

is the same now as yours? Take his hand;

blow a looking glass from grains of sand.

Pondlife

 

Pondlife

 

In order to irk swimmers

minding their own at the pool,

here comes your toolbox short of a tool,

one of the many buds, doods or brohs

who washed up stranded in France,

having crossed La Manche,

dragging their canvas wagon-trains behind them.

 

Well, it’s more a Tonka Truck thing,

tug at axles with its large metal handle

and you could easily get four on that,

two abreast each side, hauling his crappy tat,

sucking tits, four thick, swollen rubbers

that back-along surely must’ve leaked

and where it goes

he gives not a fuck,

just a plank pulling his lumbering truck.

 

Chucky wheels ford the footbath

and, oh no, too late - that’s the springing gate

trapping feet, clipping heels,

snagging stray pubes

desperate to escape his sweaty speedos

as he’s pissing about with dewberry vapes,

adjusting his bollocks and baseball hat,

sticking his shades back on and that,

for a moment, panic, every bugger’s stuck

between this dickhead and his fucking truck.

 

With a titanic effort he’s scraping tiles,

like toddlers in school dinner queues

making pigswill out of stew,

but through the slit, forces hard,

ignores the fact the walls are scarred,

has pulled his cork from the bottle,

although it comes too quick

and smacks up the pinhead prick.

If he’s noticed the queue is debatable,

checks he’s not ruptured his inflatables,

Emerges triumphant and punches sky,

looking for gasps of admiration, 

then, pushing past his witless competition

lobbing towels - completes the mission,

claiming loungers, right, left, centre court,

and all the garbage he has brought

teaches the lessons he was taught.

 

Let he who dares try:

if you want a seat you’re out of luck,

because only concrete skulls can come between

the terrace talk and winning grin

of an estuary dickhead

and his fucking truck.