Saturday 10 August 2019

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.





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