Last day of the old year.
We get a whole new one to play with
tomorrow. Bright and shiny with hope:
the fates might give us a leg up
this time.
A whole new year…!
What will we do with it?
Follow our dreams?
Make every day special?
Make every moment glitter with
Hallmark wholesomeness?
Get fit?
Get thin?
Get rich?
New job, car, house, partner?
New dog, ipod, haircut, life?
Infinite options!
Learn to salsa.
Learn to scuba dive.
Make our own bread
and become fluent in
another language
by March.
And campaign for human
rights and… dolphins.
Just to start with.
Sound familiar…?
Like last year?
What did we do with that?
Ah.
It wasn’t our fault.
Things happened…
Um, you know, things…
Important things…
We would’ve, if we
could’ve. Honestly,
we would’ve, honestly.
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t our fault…
Ok. So we gave up. Alright?
This year will be different…
Starting tomorrow…
Pass me the remote
and some crisps.
Smothered in the sticky
splatter of the words
he spat all over her.
Trapped balloon deflating, she is
sealed within a wet papier-mâché
casing of his gobbed out dirt.
Inside, her every tender bit nicked
and pricked by the knife tips
of what he said.
The razored edges sliding,
slicing out from his lips,
sneers to steal and slash her
every suck of sorry breath,
each keening lung to puncture,
each hope and fall of chest.
Chafing inner elbows, knees,
thighs, breasts’ undersides.
Undecided
in his intention,
his words are still gummed
bitter with salivary glue.
His viscous fluids
acidic and thickening,
slickening her skin to
easy cuts, bleeds and infection.
Picking and prickling, rashes,
flicked splashes, allergy and
rejection. Weeping, weighted
down, sedated heavy with his trodden
in sodden gunk, deep down, under
layers of his mouth’s accusatory
verbal vomit, he could slyly
shoot home, this syringed-up
concentrated bile he’s stored up
for her and her alone. Finally
decisive. Always derisive.
He could…
Are you semi-comatose on the sofa,
overdosed on fake cheer and Toblerone?
Are you eating brandy butter straight from
the tub and slugging down another beer,
wishing they’d all bugger off and leave you
Home Alone? Are you dozing to bad dreams
of your next credit card bill? Everyone does.
Everyone does. Are you still twitching to sink
your plastic in the high street sales? Bitching
about the crowds and headbutting old codgers
out of your way, just for that perfect bargain
that might make it all Ok? Everyone does.
Everyone does. Are you craving retail therapy
only one ungrateful day on from those carefully
wrapped gifts? Receipts saved in case the
“always wanted” doesn’t quite measure up
in the present tense – hastily discarded with
crumpled waste paper, sad bows unstrung?
Everyone does.
Everyone does. These dead days of rest
you’ve been craving for months. Locked up
in an overheated room with those you love
and mistrust. Pour in infinite booze, a twenty
year grudge. Fight for the remote, for supreme
right to pick shite on the telly. Everyone does.
Everyone does. Someone’s crying in the kitchen.
Someone’s stepped on the cat. The dog’s thrown
up on the rug and the sink’s blocked with gunk.
The turkey carcass is laughing at you and your
brother’s being a twat. Everywhere stinks of
sprouts. Everyone does.
Everyone does. Had enough? Then escape
to the nearest pub’s Happy Hour. Pour down
and glug as much as you can stomach. Put your
phone on silent and violently vomit. Then grab
some random, push them up against a wall
out the back for an unfaithful frisk and fumble.
It’s Christmas after all. Everyone does.
Whiskey-numb and muzzy, the room begins
to swing and sway in time with the lull of the
music, but “the boys in the NYPD choir” can’t
help him now: he could drown in Galway Bay
and no one would care. Or he could down one
more double and try not to stare, keep his eyes
from straying, pretend she’s not there – glowing
pink-cheeked with vodka and holding hands with
some bloke. Nothing bold or indecent, just sweet.
He could spew. She’s far too old to deck herself
in cheap pound shop tinsel, like a giggly teenage
girl – his cruel ear still picks out her soft-curling
laugh through the crowds, a sick homing device
that he can’t seem to tune out. With the back of
his head, he sees her wriggle and flirt the tinsel
round her hot, snappable neck, wound and looped
all jolly: shiny festive rope to choke down more of his
drink. To not have to think, not remember, not even
feel. She ought to know better: big, brash, baubled
earrings and that best little black dress? (He knows
how much it cost too and the way the zip snicks if
you try to run it too quick.) Next it would be reindeer
woolly jumpers, santa hats, antlers. A “naughty elf”
outfit from Ann Summers. Just a few small steps
from matching leisure wear. The bloke, this new one,
looks quite content. As well he might. Looks like he’s
taking home the treetop fairy tonight. They look good,
they look happy, they look drunk and fuzzy-edged. He
downs another double, wonder’s why he’s still there.
Her frill-suspendered stockings are filled for someone
else this year. He should leave, get a bottle, go home,
get wrecked. Talk to his dead pot plant, his unringing
phone. But he can’t, he can’t move. He’s in for the night.
Him and the NYPD and the bells on repeat. Kirsty and
Shane understand him. Santa won’t bring him comfort
or joy. Perhaps he wasn’t a good enough boy this year…
Ok, so this is for anyone drunken from the sight of a former love with a new love, which is always going to feel worse at this time of enforced jollity… Some of the references taken from this, my favourite Christmas pop song of all time. Ah yeah, and Merry Christmas to all and any who read this! xxx
(to be read with tongue firmly in cheek, party hat wilted to the side and possibly a slug or three of mulled wine…)
She wanted a designer handbag.
She wanted a cute little puppy.
She wanted expensive perfume
and a kiss.
She got a hangover. She got
a bollocking at work. She got
a lovebite on her neck and
wished she had got a scarf.
She wanted a silent night.
The neighbours were
having a domestic.
Ding dong merrily…
She wanted a Christmas tree,
but ended up feeling needled.
Frosty winds made for
much moaning.
She wanted Peace on Earth,
but then she watched the News.
She wanted to hark to herald angels
singing, but just heard the drunks.
She wanted to spread good will,
not her legs. But she got pissed.
Again. Oh well. Then, yes, she
wanted to get laid,
but not in a manger.
She’d had much stranger,
but still…
She wanted to feel the magic.
She wanted comfort and joy.
She wanted a bloody great big star
to burn through the grubby streetlights.
She got an early night and a soak
with bath cubes from her Nan.
A mince pie and a cup of tea.
And a tot of Baileys.
New bedsocks.
An invisibility cloak is useful
for a teenage wizard.
But I am not one of those:
I have put mine on Ebay.
Buy It Now.
I want rid.
With the money it fetches
I will buy that dress,
the one I saw in the window
of that shop in town,
the shop I never dare
go into.
The dress is silvery, cut
slinky to flow and flatter.
Subtly sheened in pink
to shimmer with allure.
Princess dress for the smart
modern girl.
Is that me?
Is it? What if, when I try
it on, shrug it over my
dream-buzzing head, scented
raw silk skimming my shoulders,
my chest, my stomach, my hips…
What if, when I smooth down
the fluid, clever fabric and turn, turn
so slow, slow, slowly to face
the mirror…
What if there is no girl to be seen?
Only a lovely silver-pink dress,
dancing, hanging empty in air?
What if the invisibility cloak
is fake? If it’s me that’s
not there?
I’ll be done for fraud on Ebay.
Read me,
not these paper-thin
poems or the blogs
or the status updates.
That’s not it.
Hear the words,
the ones I say
to you. Just you.
There’s no subtext.
There’s no lines
to read between.
There’s no hidden
meaning. No elitist
clever-clever references
that need looking up
to truly get what I’m
saying. To you.
Read me,
silent in your head,
moving our lips to
the shape of this.
I make up stories.
I make up poems.
I make up characters
and situations
to intrigue and amuse.
(Hopefully.)
But for you
I make up nothing.
I create nothing.
It is all real.
I’m such a sucker for a sob story.
A shoo-in for any sad, sorry tale.
A safe bet for a snuggly shoulder
to cry on. Lovely mug for so much
sweet tea and wet-eyed sympathy,
with over-tuned heartstrings easily
plucked and tugged, often broken.
Have a tissue, have a biscuit. Any
issue, I’ll listen, try to help, scrabble
to fix it. I am a soft touch, warm place
to fall, motherly chest to babble into.
I will splint up those shattered egos,
bandage those weeping old sores of
pride with my own reserves. Shuck
all those worries out onto me, then
please fuck off. The service is free.
He could surround her with poetical words:
a tight-wrapped satin sheet of
melty erotic absurdities.
Euphemisms for crudeness and
tasteful nudity.
Art, my darling…
Beautiful and metaphorical,
sweet and allegorical,
and it could mean naff all.
He could tell her all the pretty things,
sonnets crushed to a concave chest,
rhythm scribed and prescribed by
time’s great quill-wielders.
Scented posies of prose,
love-loaded verbal bouquets,
heavy-dewed with mythology’s lick
and it could mean crap all.
He could regale her with legends’ toils,
ink smudged by the sweat of history and
heroes. He could plagiarise their lust and
thrust out oiled soliloquies, roiling
gods and goddesses, to turn her on.
Slippery thumbed literary pages kissing,
worn corners turned down with a spitty finger,
second-hand paperback spines breaking,
Your words…
You lift my earmuff,
the left one, to trickle
them in, little more
than “Hello”
at our bus stop.
We can see our breath.
Your words…
I suck them off
your tongue,
tasting icicles
and cough sweets.
Swallow them
down to lie
like a Reddy Brek hug,
like a Cheshire Cat purr,
to hold like special things,
warm in my belly
all day.
Your words…
Spreading out
a creeping blush from
my smile-quirked cheek,
down, down, down,
feverish red through my
coat-wrapped and jumper-swaddled
body, my thermal-vested chest set
to thudding, my knees to wibble in
woolly tights. My toes curling secret
shudders in their firm-treading
winter boots.
