Chainsmoking cheroots
Looking down the gunbarrel
Maybe she wrote me that letter
I will never know
& if I did what difference
Would it make these days?
~
I will never know about
That either I suppose
so imponderables go
~
Image you crouched over
See you fret hard over every
word until beaten brow snaps
~
furrow yields up fears
beads come tumbling down
petrify snap splinter speck
~
pulver turn to dust
much as chimney sweeps
or this dry pressed iris
Each cherished savoury thought
generates breathless excitement
waiting in orderly queue
having ordered ghost fish
envisioned perched atop
plentiful fulsome ghost chips
complimentary mushy peas
salt & vinegar lashings
down the Deep Sea takeaway
every Tuesday night
In a thumbflick
Is the world unfurled
Mine are clumsy unused
Maladapted digits
Insignificant swollen
Leprous pointless digits
One may conclude there’s no point
In this activity
One may so conclude
Chipped enamel
Hairline fractures battered glaze
Otherwise escaped unscathed
Got off lightly close run thing
Hurricane Typhoo subsides
Tropical tempest
Blows itself away
Evening nightmares evade a gibbous moon
With canny sublimation, molten incantations
Meld in candled pen and ink hard silences,
Reams of craven, puerile words, agitate for love
In the face of victory. Love is lost and awkward
Youth undone.
Another bitty night, the wind’s to blame,
the Ham, the game, the Cheese, they all took part,
but did not do what you did, Maria…
You sly one, you twisted, silent, deadly sister
Due to your emission, I will suffer
endless tumult and derision and you will
live to lie in pastures new as if butter did not melt
Guts are a bit choppy, the wind’s to blame
I explain to the assembled throng who
Conclude it was me, not you who caused the pong
Now, simpled, feeling a complicit tool
You play it Cool, queen the art of cool,
woman’s grudge is women’s definition,
Powder your nose, pass the ammunition.
Grimbeau 