Papermate

 

Papermate

 

A bleak midwinter’s day in June

icy winds descend the flume,

sweep the soot throughout the room

and the usual tunes

recycle through your head, don’t they?

Ah, something from A Hard Day’s Night, perhaps,

You Can’t Do That, If I Fell,

You Should’ve Known Better

and what’s that smell?

 

Yes, from the range, steam,

what a choker,

neck twisted, expertly broke,

there’ll be a feast

for here’s a potful of grease,

a slaughtered goose cooked -

and wasn’t there a game called that

one Christmas?

 

You’d balance plastic figures,

multicoloured - long before

that was even a thing

on a fake saucepan lid,

watch it pivoting,

shivering - imagine waters boiling

before plunging in,

and what’s sauce for the goose,

is sauce - well, you know.

 

Now you remember

that sheaf of paper

thrust into your hands,

like an afterthought before a forethought,

or barely any thought at all -

maybe it was half a ream;

late paper for paper's mate.

 

You’d been feeling sick -

a rare day off school,

swinging the lead, they’d say,

on your birthday -

pigheaded, thick-eared,

depressed heat oppressed brain,

still, mustn't complain

about feeling the strain,

tired of watching your back,

in this war of attrition

of constant attack

and the forces ranged against you?

Unequal in the extreme.

 

Such Masters of Risk,

rattling beads, rattling cups,

throwing six, throwing up,

positioned up mountains, marching plains,

searching subterranean homesick drains

to winkle you out

with a cocktail stick.

Gaddafi’s final chukka.

 

Run through, pricked,

adorning half a grapefruit -

a sandwiched chump

skewered beneath a pineapple chunk

and somewhere up north from cheese,

make it Edam, please,

something synthetic.

 

The table’s set,

under flickers of candelabra

that never quite banished

Herman’s creeping dark,

five places, six faces -

it’s all vanished

won’t come back, now,

within your fog - lost,

buried beneath ice and frost.

 

But on peeling paper, by the door,

if you peer hard enough,

it can still be seen -

sticky brown residual trickles,

where a grenade

of homemade pickles,

was hurled and smashed

above his head,

shattered into smithereens, it’s said.

 

Careful, now, here’s sentiment,

pinpricks the hairs on skin,

rising forensically to dust glasses

for onion peelings,

ripped up grasses,

rippling the drink

to swim in the water within.

 

Still, your turn for a good one.

Strange words, these, off-hand

like a refusal to commit,

delivered in steel and grit

through teeth, not lips,

and you’re left holding

these 250 sheets approximately,

like Queen Jane.

 

The paper’s plain

but ready to be typed upon

receive an imprint.

I can still see you

holding that pale, blue lidded

Smith Corona in something like light,

as though you’d just learnt to write.

 

And later, in the relative

safety of the trenches, delight,

mapping plans for flight -

while you never could win this fight,

there’s always tomorrow.

 

A strategic withdrawal,

you could claim,

although, to be more mundane,

truth is, there’s never choice,

only later, when you found a voice,

you expressed sorrow.

 

As for what happened next,

well, it served its time,

saw action, fought campaigns:

those keys were well-worn

by the time all doors were knocked

latches lifted and unlocked -

going with you as you travelled.

 

Before my ink ribbons unravel

or are replaced,

just this - you told them

about the typewriter -

and they asked you with a sneer at school,

was it a Petite?

 

But, looking back,

it was anything but that.