Need a Massage?

 

Need a Massage?

 

Walls of silence, walls of sound –

overused words, meaningless,

a blend of background noise

meets tortoise trotters –

 

and he always wins

in that story about a race up a hill,

featuring the rabbit, dog and ipis.

 

No – the real walls are in your head.

Lately I felt them,

screaming barriers, claustrophobic,

built somewhere between

terror and panic

 

and that cheese croissant on display:

It’s the same one everyday,

sat flaking in the glass cabinet

but it can’t be, can it?

 

Unless – they’ve sealed it in a vacuum,

but then, what’s the point of it,

what use can it possibly serve?

 

Hyperbole? Well, I guess so – moulting

outside, sat beside

this tortoiseshell cat,

a stray, curled up, shop cornered,

but mounting a campaign for my lap.

 

Careful – she could scratch –

but seemed so beautiful, a comfort,

content to stretch out her back

against my legs. Then, you arrived,

 

Pajero pulled up outside

‘Brands for Less’ – but I’m a mess

masquerading as somewhat dressed:

 

We depart, you speak of your sister:

‘Lori says, I should massage Daddi,

just gentle tonight, You want?’

 

Daddi – her pet name for me,

even though she’s 55, in Davao City,

halfway across the globe from here.

 

Instinct dictates

I should roll my eyes, ‘You hate?’

you reply, stroking thighs, and indicate

as we’re pulling out

across the painted lanes.

 

No. If it’s all the same,

I’ll accept. It’s either greed

or just maybe, I need.

The Last Box of Cigarettes

 

The Last Box of Cigarettes

 

The last box of cigarettes sat on a shelf,

the only company – itself,

which is tautological but quite neat,

you’ll agree – and factually inaccurate:

I have 52 more

gathering dust, in a drawer

back in the UK - always fact-check.

So how this one slipped the net

after four years spent repenting

is hard to say. Housed in a tempting

flip-back lavender-pink carton,

these Sobraine Cocktails, were a bargain

in rainbows of colour and gold tipped.

When your fingers gripped

one of these beauties, you felt rich.

Banned so fast, it made me sick

once the killjoys got their sticky mitts

all over them, because they did not sit

pretty in continuing eras of austerity,

Well, enjoy your soul grinding poverty

if you must – having extra work booked

on the weekend – some UK crooks

masquerading as school inspectors,

armed with spreadsheets, data, lectures

due - I took up the box to give to you

if you tipped up to help out. True,

I feel the spark, your heat

my eyes gypsy roving when you greet

me of a morning, lingering too long

and your engorged blouse. Wrong.

I know it, but there’s that frisson

that exists – and as I passed them across

to kiss your cheek, felt no loss

when you moved your head

to take my lips instead.

Later you sent pictures, delighted,

as for me, despite it all,

I couldn’t help but feel excited.

They Keep Killing Steed

 

They Keep Killing Steed

 

‘Same old far-fetched tat,’

you remember your mother sneering

after watching something like that

New Avengers.  ‘Crap’.

Except she didn’t swear back then

and slapped you for deploying it.

You’d hoarded covers of TV Times

with Purdey on them in that blue

tight, strappy, cross your heart dress,

put them to lively use,

a private Playtex late night line up -

and when you’d sneaked a view

or two of the actual show

it sent shivers down the spine.

Seemed so modern, worth cheering

a future where Steed’s prosecuting

his philosophy - persecuting

those bastards doing the looting,

putting the black, using shooters –

there was gnaws and cybernauts, too.

Still, they kept killing him in the end,

after two seasons, he was history,

last seen in Canada amongst mystery

like – why the fuck is he there?

Nowadays, no one cares

to use all the Motown tunes we lacked,

like Chichen Mac, Chicken,

Oh, Chicken Mac,

when are you coming back?

Because only some can cane it here

where the days of Pearly Spencer

are long gone, if something’s wrong,

then nobody’s letting on.

And I imagine you’d shoot to kill,

when they put up the electricity bills

one-more-time.

It Will Come and It Will Go

 

It Will Come and It Will Go

 

4.30 am. Blinking in a half light

cast by external globes on walls

outside, hooked into concrete,

probing through translucent drapes

that only manage half a job.

Fish beneath the sheets, give up,

toss the pillows aside -

‘The fateful day is come,’ you’d cry

if you were given to hysteria

or were a dramatic sort of cove –

well, could be, you suppose

as you pad, pale naked, across tiles,

pulling on shorts, T Shirt clammy

for the day before. It smells of piss.

Too early for gym, poke at idle work,

keeping lights dim - they could seep,

creep like snakes under the door,

wake her from her flowery sleep.

Still, not long before she appears

tousle topped: ‘How’s your sleep, dear?’

You both put plus 45 minutes in,

exit sweating from the gym,

strip each other off in the kitchen

toss the rags and shags inside

the open-mouthed machine -

empty-bellied it will chew on the cud.

She likes your shorts, she should,

she picked them, after all –

having audited all your clothes

when you weren’t alert

and declared a deficits– shirts,

too, and when you ask her why

she smiles – perhaps more wise

than ever you will be.

You sit in the car, silently,

she drives quiet dawn streets,

you’re tired, think pillows, sheets,

4.30am and the hours spent tossing

thinking lots, but saying nothing,

until, she breaks down the walls -

‘I know you, from bottom to top,

your head is full of work.’

She’s right, of course,

it’s in there, like high hurdles,

breasts and bellies trapped in girdles,

dammed blood throttling brick veins,

and nothing much you can explain.

More May Pang than Yoko,

so she calls out, softly, because she knows:

“It will come and it will go.’

Lexical Set

 

Lexical Set

 

Do you feel Anxiety - scanning right wing UK red tops

as Beloved by your social platforms; your TikTok,

reporting your wank; transcribing slop

of the highest fucking order.

Betrayal of what? Minor royals, major minions,

sinners and hypocrites – all of you lot -

Biased, shitting panties, offering soiled

evidence as Blackmail material, boiled up,

fished from woks with tongs and served. Bombshell?

Like what? Tripped up on wires, buried landmines

or something less Brutal, concoctions of candy floss

for dense masses in Bursts of hyperbole; Chaos

in some thick twat’s Devastated household tonight -

bubble bursting in an Embarrassing twist

a four-word Exit issued by a Z-listed

presenter – Garraway, Nunchetty, Kelly – today’s

bunch of fuckers, sucking off their own tails

chowing on Extreme Fury and talking epic-fails.

Horror Hots-Up,  Humiliated by a Major Warning

witness on-air Meltdowns, some fawning

bastard, licking royal boots, Nicholas Witchell wannabes,

with nothing approaching Mel B’s charm;

Panic-Inducing, stirring thick clots, raising false alarms

Plead, Plot, Pour on Ramped Up polemic

Record it - you’ll be up to thunder thighs in chunky vomit,

and Rocked to the core, Scrapped,

put out to pasture, and while you Struggle,

while you’re Urged to believe and Weaponised

you’ll Wrestle with a smokescreen and shut your eyes

on anything grievous With Immediate Effect.

Pinch Point

 

Pinch Point

 

Last night I missed the plane

but kept forgetting the memory

until with a jerk, I remembered again –

all a bit Bee Gees, you’ll agree:

 

‘Gotta Get a Message to You’

north by northwest of staying alive

somewhere between half past five

and other random stations

existing between this and that nation

where you and me reside.

 

There was no cradle, no receiver,

no coiled cord, no dial, no whir, no clicks –

as though such things did not exist;

they’d never deliberately missed

out Q and Z, and the plane had not taxied,

 

Was there still time to call,

ask for a refund, beg for a delay?

I could get to Heathrow within a day,

if only someone somewhere would listen -

it was never planned, something missing,

how I could explain to you

this absence – that in truth, I was an alien

in a world where they dispense a splash,

place absorbent tissue in a glass

and the drink replenished, reappears.

 

For beer it tastes overwarm, sickly,

and no matter how quickly

you drain it to the bottom – it fills again.

 

There’s a crush at the bar; closes at 10

disgorges drinkers onto the street,

disconsolate; treading on my feet

as if eager to trip up the careless pedestrian,

single them out, teach them a lesson

and you are so far away.

 

Cometh the hero, cometh the day -

the pinch point is approaching,

negligent of feeling, it cares less

about you or me, intends on leaving mess

behind – they’d beg me to be preacher:

‘We’re but as good as our worst teacher.’

Evil. Infinite Evil.

 

Evil. Infinite Evil.

 

Yesterday, hours flew past.

I was back on the bus before I got off –

there were pangs, you know?

 

Like an egg, sunny side up

or flipped over-easy - greasy -

either the yolk sings

or it leaves you queasy

 

while the gnawing rats of depression

chow down on your innards;

they are never far away,

thickening their nests inside me.

 

Anyway, last night's a thief,

I knocked back the beers of relief,

no more than one or two,

and waited on sweet sleep

and her promised velvet lands –

to fly somewhere softer.

 

Yet still, those black ponds

of messages wait.

something banal, trivial, of no use

yet twisting into a barbed sisal noose –

at which I might howl disbelief.

 

What they contain is nothing less

than bureaucratic zero-interest

yet they task me, they rate me,

and just when I’m pulling free,

drifting into green Sargasso Seas,

I am dragged back, 

castaway and beached.

 

Oh yes, there was apology;

the sender rescinds and beseeches,

her hollow hull suffered breeches,

for I too have messages in me:

and she knows about payloads -

call it a latent capacity

for evil, infinite evil.

 

So, I suppose I could’ve referenced

‘Apocalypse, Now’,

or Joseph Conrad’s colossal

trek into dark iniquity –

but I feel I understand the source

feeling aggrieved; 

manipulated, forsaken, undone -

so, instead, reach out to 

the Keeper of Traken.