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.