The Garden of Turkish Delights

The Garden of Turkish Delights

they tempted him with an idea --
a cedar-scented memory of Friday afternoons
in the room above the chapel
at St Andrew's School for Boys
and Bosch's triptych
projected onto the dry-wipe board.

The sadistic pleasures of Hell
where tortured souls writhed on pitchforks and
cavorted with the heads of birds and fish;
the austere calm of Heaven
where angels sang with sweet devotion
and the Garden of Earth Delights
where mortals were tempted by sins of the flesh;
The gluttony and the fornication
and the perversions of apples.

But when he got to the club
and paid his admittance (plus the one-off membership fee)
his visions of belly dancers and slave girls
were shattered by the reality
of rose-scented jellies
and women in hair nets like canteen staff
who offered to feed him from long-handled tongs.

At the hotel
he picks at the scabs of spoiled childhood
and remembers the guilty pleasure
of lying on his front with one hand down his trousers
and Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus'.