We Won’t Remember Them

 

We Won’t Remember Them

 

When you leave, we won’t remember you.

No one does. There’ll be a space

like something vanished without a trace;

trouble is, what disappeared is hard to finger,

a taste that lingers that can’t be placed.

Can you actually see that black hole?

Blurred pictures, sums and telescopes,

jabbering fingers of old bald blokes

with fishy names and fishy gestures

are scarcely proof. Truth is, for a while,

you might have made a gravity well,

a small impression, a short-lived smell,

a dimple, if you will - but then you’re on the rim,

spiraling fast and tumbling in.

Ah, my friend, in your fond imaginings

you were the jam filling that glued the cake,

except, of course, sponge crumbles, it breaks

sucks in enough rum and it's all shakes

and the floor's covered in shredded flakes.

You won’t be missed. It won’t fall apart,

only in your own head did you think it’s art

or you were vital, and somehow the heart

that pumps raspberry blood to the brain.

Friend, without you, it will be the same,

you’re not as important as you believed,

whether you go on living or you’re deceased,

it is always so and the trick is this:

sad thoughts only stay on the leaver’s kiss.

Uncartoned

 

Uncartoned

 

They say unboxing, these days, don’t they?

Probably from the same tossers’ brains

who came up with shite names

for other things - like ramping up, doubling down,

crap that only the influencers and the lame

would bother themselves repeating,

like a foul unwanted belch, after eating

a plateful of rank kippers.

Fuck ‘em all, I say, I’ll coin the word uncarton.

It came to me, I’m certain,

inside this morning’s shower curtain, you see?

It doesn’t take much effort to slap a prefix

in front of a pack of three. Make myself sound clever

as I’m rub-a-dubbing up some soap into lather;

it’s tough going though, because I’d  only just

ripped the soap from its sleeve,

uncartoned it, see? And the pink surface’s hard,

no matter how vigorously I use it:

which made me think,

(like the way I uncartoned you, dear),

that tomorrow, after laying dormant in the wet sink;

it’ll be warmed over, soft, pliable, wet:

takes time but I’ll make a lover of it yet.