The Dating Game

I brought a single yellow rose and placed it on the table
wishing I were moneyed, still, for then I would be able
to buy my love an evening of Parisian cuisine
and not a burger at MacDonalds where you don’t know where it’s been.

She turned up late, as well she would, and not alone, alas
I regretted eating gherkins – they had left me full of gas.
Six burly guys with Slavic accents crowded in the door
the customers all turned and stared – then turned and ate some more.

“I saw your ad in Brides-are-us” she said as she drew near;
“I want you for my wife,” she said. “I have the passport here.”
“Steady on,” I said,” This is the first time that we’ve met;
“I’m flattered by proposal but I’m not that smitten yet.”

She looked at me a little strange, as if I talked in Brummie
“You are the thirty-something with a baby in your tummy?”
“Oh no,” I said ,” You’ve pegged me for some religious blighter
I’m a forty-something demon kin who doubles as a writer.”

“The girl you want is over there, the blond one with the stroller
I saw her reading ‘Brides’ just now -- she drove up in a Roller
You’re not the one I’m waiting for – she’s just pulled up outside
I’ll just go out and head her off -- the burgers here are fried.”

Broken Engagement

She paddles in dark muddy waters
but can’t find a ring with her feet
still wearing a thong of her daughter’s
that slipped up the crack of her seat
The rotting away of her liver
had reached down and pickled her toes,
but throwing the ring in the river
was her business, as everyone knows.

She Spoke Too Soon

She wore a diamond
in the hollow of her throat:
a peg
for a supra-sternal notch
that kept her vocal cords
in perfect tune.

What a prize she was
for a collector of music boxes
who cut out her throat
with a hatchet
but who was disappointed
to find it flawed.

Aubade

Eyes still lidded
with the fleeting demons of sleep,
I watch your shower-beaded figure
slip white folded lace over gently mounded breasts.
Dog-yellow panties, still damp from evening kisses
and fingers slid between your thighs
to release the heady scent of need.
An oatmeal jumper, held tight against skin
as faded jeans slide over legs
that gripped so tight an hour ago.

Grey eyes sparkle as you catch my smile
and I pull back the duvet,
filling the room with the stink of sweat and sex and fingers twined into hair and forgetfulness of the world (if only for a night)
and your lower your gaze and shake your head
and glance out of the window into the pale dawn, bright with snow
and your gold-banded finger flashes.

As the door closes I lift my hand to my face
and the scent of you is still captured on my fingers
at least for another hour.

Another hour.


for Totally optional Prompts

Tangles

Her husband,
his mistress,
her lover and his wife
became a Gordian knot
of secrets and intrigues.
so she ran away
with the lady from the supermarket till
and the cat.

A Long Wait and Waiting Still

“I’ll call you,” he said,
“you’re an absolute star,”
as he waved a goodbye
from his bright yellow car
then he roared far away
to a film in Peru
a theater in Hull
and a co-op in Crewe.
She awaited that call—
never strayed from the phone
never ate, never drank
not a murmur or moan.
She died a week later
with no-one to hear
except for her dog
who ate well for a year.

Snowball

From the window
she sees children
building snowmen in green wellies
the garden
a foot deep
in crisp snow
and a tiny mound
where Lisa, seven,
buried Snowball.

Snowball was the family cat.
It cried for two days.

Darling Mary

In a pocket of her coat
Mary Whitcombe kept a poppet
made of clay she’d dug
from the dark bank
of the river
where it splashed down
cold as ice
from the high fields
and decorated
with a lock of hair
from her mother
and clothed
in a scrap if nightdress.
Mary held the doll
and told it her secrets
and punished it
when she felt slighted.

Anne Whitcombe died
for no good reason
the doctors could see.
They found nothing
but for a bruise
like a giant thumb.

She Dances Still

She has Pandora’s
secrets
hidden in apple chest
of many drawers.
A puzzle box
where the souls of those
condemned to Hell
hold fast the mechanism.

Who am I to disbelieve
the pretty words
of an angel
for she dances so prettily
on the head of a pin.

Hard Cheddar

Dilated,
the image in the mirror
shifts a fraction
as a speculum
the size of a locomotive
and (by the feel of it)
fresh out of the freezer
invades my personal space.
“Just hold it there,”
says the nurse (male)
“and give me a smile.”

I’d have kicked him
had my feet not been in stirrups.
“Just my little joke,” he says,
shining a torch inside.
“It looks uninhabited
but I’ll take a swab, just in case.”

I’ll give him uninhabited,
and I relax
in that defining moment
where I imagine shoving a speculum
up his urethra
and saying ‘cheese.”

The Odd Revelation about Mary’s Dad

The Odd Revelation about Mary’s Dad.

“Slowly does it,” Mary said,
slipping the needle right into his head.
“We’ll go through the eye and into the brain,
He’ll not say ‘niblits and nobblers’ again.”

“Is that wise?” her friend Jenny asked.
“My brother is young but his youth will not last.
When he’s an adult he’ll say what he pleases
should he be punished for such little teases?”

“Of course,” said Mary, “for seven is old
to be saying such things and being so bold
he’ll thank us tomorrow, of that I am sure
in between mopping the dribblings and more.”

“”It just seems so harsh,” said Jen with a frown
“because sometimes he’s up and at other’s he’s down.
I’d hate to see him depressed every day
because we’ve cut off the things he might say.”

“Don’t worry,” said Mary, “a lobotomy
will do him no harm – he’ll still eat his tea
and shout at the telly and ask for more beer
he’ll be just like my dad’s been for many a year.”

Spiderman Fingers

A Spidey suit
and a new comic
as a birthday treat.
All day Spiderman
zoomed around the house
climbing the walls (with the aid of a chair)
and shooting nets
from his pump-action wrist guns
until they were lost
between the raspberries
and the rhubarb trees.

Birthday teas
were jelly and ice cream and chocolate fingers
but not for spidermen
who didn’t wash their hands.

“What do you mean,
Spidermen don’t eat chocolate fingers?
I’m not a spiderman really,
I’m just me.”

Canine Love

Instant infatuation
as I browse the gardening section
of Wilkinson’s
my fingers fluttering
over new season surprises.

No money to buy the brushwood screen
I coveted last year
and went to buy
the week it went out of stock.

No money to embrace
half a wall stacked with fruiting shrubs,
perennials, annuals,
seeds and summer bulbs.

No money to buy—
wait! A canine sculpture
in copper and steel
with droopy ears
and waggy tail
(on a spring)
and nodding head
(ibid)
and pointy nose
and four little feet
and polished toes

I could hardly contain my glee
I had to buy him – he was just so me
One of a kind and ten pounds to pay
I’ll skimp on the dinner just for today.

Nightkin Day

Snow blankets the scented garden
building up on shrubs and trees
Soil freezes, berries harden
hard to live in times like these.

Stirred from sleep by meager bedding
Nightkin blinks in light of days -
burrows under eaves while shedding
precious fats to winter’s gaze.

Under shelter of the steeple
where the snow has drifted in
evidence of human people
footprints of the bigger kin.

Here he finds discarded tissue
serviette and biscuit crumb
winter cold no more an issue
Nightkin curls in dreamer’s numb.

The Curious Little Demon Who Sat on My Bannister, ‘Til Two

As I travelled to my bed
I met the oddest fellow, red,
who looked at me with splintered eyes
and asked if I was in disguise.
I said: “Of course I’m not in drag,
do you perceive some filthy hag
to be conversing on the stair?”
He shrugged as if he didn’t care.
“I though you just a foreign chap,”
he said and pulled a felted cap
from a pocket lost from view
“Have you travelled from Peru?”
I said, “You seem a little chilled. Are you?
“A bit,” he said. (His teeth were bared.)
“Aren’t you just a little scared?”
“A bit,” I said, “When I’m in bed
“I’ll wrap the duvet round my head.”
“It’s time,” he said “I heard the bell.
“I guess we’ll meet again…

…in Hell”

The Painter’s Vision

“Use red for the eyes,” she said, “use red,”
and peered from my shoulder “She’s one of the dead
that haunt the building on Old Carver’s Lane –
Have you felt her cold hands; have your seen her again?”

I told her to hush and gave her a stroke
and tickled her feathers and fed her a roke.
“She’s no more dead than you are, or I,
I’ve not spoken to her but tomorrow I’ll try.”

“You’ll try and you’ll fail,” she said, grooming her tail,
“She’ll open her mouth but her voice has gone stale.
Stick with your figurines, paint four or five
and leave the drowned women for those still alive.”

“Are you saying I’m dead?” I cried with alarm;
“These words that you speak will do nothing but harm.”
“I’m fit as a flea and alive as a herring
I’ll thank you to keep your own thoughts for un-sharing.”

“Of course you are fit,” she replied with a sigh.
“I said it before as the centuries rolled by.
You perfected your art by light of the day
but you shy from the truth, Mister Dorian Gray.”

Embers

A pardon
for all the sins
and the blood
and the stillborn children
cast to a sodden grave.

It wasn’t much to ask
of a priest
and a bishop
and a holy man on a horse
but they turned away.

And as the fire seared her flesh
but before the smoke suffocated her
she forgave them.

And the village died
for want of a midwife
and a doctor
and a voice to tell them
when to plant the seeds.

Aunt Lydia's Drawing Room

I felt
discomfited
by the visit
to my lover’s Aunt
for over the mantle
a piece of Art
(with capital) --
A portrait of her mother
executed
in oils and hemp;
one foot
painted in the style
to make it twitch
the final danse macabre.

Status Update

They flirted with him:
her friends,
her colleagues,
her BFF –
Angela bought him drinks
Sarah asked him to light her cigarette
and Jenny cut in on the dance mat
at the penny arcade.
They all said
how lucky she was
to have the fittest bloke
in the whole town.

But when she came to work
with a black eye
and a broken nose
they closed ranks
and said he was a tosser
on Facebook.

The sunfish crucible

Against the glow
of the setting sun
and the bruising
of a topaz sky,
a flicker of light
from the rusting bowl
of the sunfish crucible.

The nymphs relinquish
their burning ache
to the mischief of Eden’s daughters,
wishing their last memory
wasn’t of the blue waters
on a Monday afternoon.