One of those startled May mornings,
spring just about catching on to herself.
He’s stuck inside by a cardboard stand.
Top of the creaky bus station escalators.
Superdrug and the fruit and veg place,
the one that’s not been there for years.
Upright sentinel – bold man in black.
But not Will Smith or Johnny Cash.
Smile on loan from the Cheshire Cat.
Palms clasped, cuffs peeping pristine.
Suitably suited and booted. I don’t
buy it – whatever it is he’s selling.
I swerve an eyes-down panic-zag
through tired formica tables spilling
like ingrained tea-stains from the café.
Fumble my bags, my phone, look busy.
“No thank you” poised on my tongue.
He’s got broad shoulders – can’t help
but notice. And that smile, Cheshire,
but not cheesy. Still Cheshire-ing me.
Like he knows things. Really sees me.
Cynicism slips: I glance, snag his eye.
“Funeral Plans – will you rest assured?”
He winks. I remember I am very late.
Ground floor of three: they’re tossing beers
through the open window and shouting
leers and taunts with those mates
who they don’t quite trust
to let inside the flat.
Treading cigarette butts in dead grass
and snorting at the graffiti on the paths
of the disabled bungalows opposite.
(Nothing they’ve not done themselves.)
Prophetic-emphysema, tooth-hole grins
coughing out gobs of frost white air
through coldsore lips and nose dribble.
All skin chafed to weeping sandpaper. Chilly out tonight, isn’t it mate? Sniffing.
EastEnders theme leaking out too loud. Cosy eh? Good on you, old friend.
Passing the soggy spliff-end in and out
across the window-ledge.
Those old mates of theirs,
who they don’t trust to let in.
Dreg-slopping cans lobbed into the grey.
No twilight here, just different sludges.
Scufflings in council-trimmed bushes:
a bad joke about paedophiles.
It’s too funny.
They shout at the shrub,
kick a few dents in the green.
Spit a few lip curls and mime
disgusting actions with glee
and chapped hands,
then forget. Spliff’s finished.
They’re calling their incontinent dog.
(Poor old sod.) He’s crapping
on the back step.
Communal door.
And they’re gone, for now.
Those old friends, of years standing,
the friends they don’t quite trust
to let in their home.
He looks at her, half asleep
on the fourth-hand sofa:
it’s as worn out as she is.
Watches her hand on their bump.
Those friends: he will not go back.
She’s boring a hole in the back of his head,
drawing waves to his brain with her psychic eye.
It’s not really psychic, but she figures
she might learn if she tries.
She’s boring a hole in his head…
(“But what if I’m boring?”)
She’s practicing mind-tapping him
every day, same place, same time.
Concentrating her thoughts through train fug
and hair gel. Feverish and squashing
the salivating temptation
to lean forward, just a little
and slub the nape of his neck
with the nubby wet tip of her tongue.
She’s boring a hole in the back of his head.
(“But what if I’m boring?”)
And maybe it’s working. As long as
she gets the seat directly behind his.
As long as she can hug up to, almost touch,
his grey-suited back on the escalator.
Forward, upward motion together,
shared ascension.
As long as he doesn’t turn around and find
some weird girl fixating on his haircut.
She’s boring a hole…
(“I’m boring…”)
And yet, if only he would turn…
Fiction can be overrated.
Her feet were cut when I met her,
bare-soled in the bathroom
at someone else’s party.
Mildewed tiles.
Dusty Domestos bottles.
A smell of sick
and bad drains.
She was beautiful
like spitting candlewax.
The sort I would peel from
the back of church pews
when I was a kid.
Sprawling in the empty tub,
bloody socks sopping on the basin.
“I tried to rinse them,” she said.
“But it’s not coming out.”
Smoking a fuggy luxuriance,
untroubled by smoke alarms
or the clunking extractor fan.
Her ash hung in there,
tip-clinging in squiggles:
I didn’t want them to drop
on the enamel.
Inevitable.
And then
I scuttled away
to have a little cry.
Actually, quite a big cry.
A good old weep and wail.
Sloppy, loud and snotting.
In the bus station Ladies,
where people pretend
not to see. ‘Cause, really,
we’ve seen it all.
And then
I wandered out
dazed in Saturday sunlight
through the oozing market cackle.
I found I’d bought a banana.
One of my five a day. (Not five
bananas: that would be strange.)
I wished it was cake.
I sat on a bench and began
to unpeel.
And then
I had a thought.
It caught me unawares
three and a half inches
down the banana. The old man
in the butcher’s van shouted
his fresh-meat deals, slapping
down cold flesh, dead fillets.
His mic-patter cricked through me.
(The deal I’d had before wasn’t good.)
I bit down on more banana,
chewing, swallowing, the thought
solidifying in my shins.
The itch to walk.
Away.
I resisted.
The urge to scrub it out with spirits.
To vomit you all over Facebook.
To go to the pub where you drink
and scream in your glassed-up eyes
‘til your face ran with my spit.
Somewhere you know
I resisted.
Your hands on my sleeves,
my shoulder, the small of my back.
Your lips pushing bruises, your
tongue, live muscle in my mouth.
You begged me to say I lied about it.
Somewhere you know
I resisted.
The tug of “justice” that might
make it my fault. The questions
of the nurses, their latex-gloved
hands kind on my brokenness.
The sad, solid love of my best friend’s
breath on the payphone.
Somewhere you know
I resisted.
Every atom of me sobbed for truth.
Every pill bottle whispered my name.
Every blade cried to stroke into me
like you did. Like you. I kept “our secret”.
But not for you. I am new. I am gone.
Ok, so I wasn’t expecting to post again so swiftly, but that’s what happens sometimes when I can’t sleep…. It’s either that or wash the kitchen floor… Well, you can imagine which was my preferred option…
Now this one is a little smutty… Just so you know in advance…
The Portrait
Finger-paint me.
Slake me, taint me.
Smear me, splatter
and touch me up.
Choose your medium.
Water-colour wash me
to splash-pastel wet.
Stroke me, saturate
me. You’re nowhere
near finished yet.
Squirt and squash
to hurt me: make
my primaries bleed.
Slather and slosh me.
Brush and crush me
with acrylic and oil.
Ruin me, sculpt me,
my angles and turns.
Depth and perspective.
Chiaroscuro and used
condoms. Cubism and
contempt. For those
unframed, facing dark
to your studio walls.
Burnt-out waiflets, spoilt
whores high on turps.
I am more.
Finger-paint me. Make
me up. Line and lay me.
Throw it all at me: spray
me a mystique. You can
only be this good with me.
Bang me to hang me,
there against white brick.
I am stark. Defiant. Pinned.
Defined.
Now, let in the gawpers:
your friends, some critics,
the “mused and abused”.
(That’s not me, never me…)
Stir with bile, adding copious
quantities of spiteful white wine
at room temperature.
Let’s see who is buying.
Today she finds
she is scribble on toilet walls,
again. Crunched balls of spitty paper
hurled at her head in Geography,
again. She is mis-spelled
in leaky biro, again.
Whispers of “trash” in Maths.
Mumbles of “slut” in
English Comprehension.
(She comprehends completely.)
Today she finds
she’s been here for weeks:
she’s been here and hearing
it all too long. She’s turned
her bloody-bitten cheek
and tuned her head to white noise,
lalalalaaaa… Today she finds
she can’t, she just can’t
do it anymore.
Today she finds
her fist smashing some girl’s face.
(Doesn’t matter which, but this one
has that sneer. And inky hands.)
Her teeth snarl bubblegum-grit.
The girl’s nose bleeds with smug.
She finds the meaning of adrenalin
and the word “hysteria”.
She doesn’t stop.
Today she finds
the heating is turned too high
outside the Head’s office and
her Mum looks stupid in shock
and a new Primark poloneck.
It’s orange.
Today she finds
the walls have been smeared “clean”.
The notes are gone like invisible ink.
She finds she isn’t bothered
the way time unwinds
in Suspension.
The dentures are surprisingly realistic.
He had been sceptical at first.
How could something manufactured
and synthetically glued to his jaws
recreate the natural, pure, organic joy
of that first puncture of a virgin neck?
But…
The bite is pleasingly precise.
Especially after a tiny bit of his own
cunning custom-sharpening.
(They don’t do that on the NHS.)
He finds himself bearing down with
renewed finesse, as in his insatiable youth
a few centuries past. In more recent times
he’d began to fret, fearing his performance
and enjoyment would be marred and curtailed
by failing loose fillings and gum disease’s
inevitable receding creep. Indeed,
it had impeded his pleasure considerably.
He had dreaded losing an incisor
in a used up young lady.
But now, his crafted smile sets him free.
Once again he is the thirstiest seducer
he has ever been. She is flesh: prime,
pristine and ripe for bleeding.
Feisty little barstool-percher:
Daddy’s Princess by day,
prey to lust by night.
And to him. She bucks a faint flutter
of flight against his tightening grip.
Hunger stabbing earlier and finally dark,
he’d stalked closing time’s reckless hour
of the feckless fuckless. Slurrers of hope,
over experience. He saw her. (Albeit fuzzily:
must remember to get that free sight test.)
Her eyes were bloodshot and fever-hazed.
Now, feeling the fire bump in her wrists
and ooze hot from her new-cut vein,
he knows… She saw it in him, with
the certainty of twelve vodkas:
she saw he was not “past it”.
(Thank you! Thank you! I love you!)
Some things are “false”, yes my sweet,
but no need for Viagra here.
He widens his lips over her split skin,
tearing it further, digging in deep.
A “kiss” is too demure for this.
He sucks and groans and drinks:
she is strong – an addiction’s kick.
Blood sluicing with lingering Steradent:
mint-rusty tingle and adhesive aftertaste
to the greedy gorge of his tongue.
Until he is done. Sated.
She is quiet. Still.
Emptied…
Later, he watches them,
stowed safe in their jar,
floating in reddening mist
and chemicals before dawn.
They smile.
He is weary now, tired – like they say
of graves. These days he needs his rest.
And sometimes a mug of Horlicks.
This song is nothing to do with vampires or dentures… but seeing as I was thinking a lot about teeth and biting whilst writing this, I think I’ll allow myself the small indulgence of including it here.
