Points

Points

You noticed I topped your tank up?

Somebody remembered calling

pointedly from separate room and bed.

Tossed back clean sheets, thinking

there’d been no topping for years

then cursed softly and wished

other words were spoked instead,

that couldn’t be later misconstrued,

knife twisted into something lewd,

broken to pistol start some daily feud

and set them off that morning.

Yawning, ignoring, ostrich buried heads

clueless in the pillows - well possibly:

foreseeing through closed doors

eludes both of them at present.

Gnawing those fossilised bones,

discontent rattling round home

like unmixed cement, churning

their toothpick skeletons in closets,

flicking on those charging points,

sockets switched off that could

or could not stew overnight;

spark electric fire, smoulder; burn

with why won’t you ever learn?

Arguments this meagre and weak

in construction misses the point:

their muttered mouths open, speak,

score points, roll eyes and greet

with pick the bones out of that,

why don’t you? Or some such crap.

Beyond the whatever don’t be soft

light switch with knowing laugh,

more building walls, less crossing bridges,

both experts at throwing them up.

To change this late is to dream

of futile rubbing antiseptic words

like cream onto a conflict

raging so hard and for so long,

that what began it has gone,

just an irretrievable snatch of song;

not even so much as a crotchet.

Every phrase calls for contradiction,

slapdash rasping matchbox friction,

no thinking of touching thoughts –

all feelings felt are dirty double dealt;

so putting it between sharpened lips,

a tongue so pointed, teeth that grit,

rictus fixed and bite down so hard

they shatter the wanton flesh into shards.

No. Topped up during restless sleep,

where both dreamed of handling points.

Pushing the button, switching tracks:

parallel lines that gash and wrack,

divergent lines that wide the crack,

or collision course concludes attack

in an ultimate nuclear winter fall-out

of half life. Well possibly:

Foreseeing through closed doors

eludes both of them. At present.