and Cadmus and marriage she mused over her vodka shot espied her young gardener the neighbour, all tight arse and bronzed nicely and her his posh totty fallen on hard times due to financial irregularity, yes she would enjoy a fall on his hard times, a cliché but it was her cliche. She was a cougar, wasn’t she? Not mutton dressed as spring galivanting lamb. A cougar with two plastic hips and a dream in a shot glass.
see him dig over his borders with fork, and see years ago through red eyes a sharp school uniform in black, Mam secured noose striped school tie flap, black shined shoes scuff in his headlong gasp at bodies twitch pierced on school railings, small animals impaled shudder and shakes his head to make these sights disappear out of his sweated head. And my neighbour forks up worms.
in proper fresh Beef fat for better flavour, in a proper chip pan. Don’t let
old fat lie. Keep it new, not like neighbours, nowt against them,
not meaning to be offensive but veg don’t put hairs on your chest,
or give a bloke owt to hold onto on a night. There’s yon young un out
on a morning in her slippers and pyjamas hangs out her undies,
as if no ones looking. Him next door in his loose dressing gown lumps white
bags in grey bin, pussy cardboard boxes in blue. Like I said don’t let old fat lie.
Tha allus sees summat proper fresh
out thee windows.
at his military haircut garden, her delicate wineglass posture backyard, my cracked concrete yard, rotted wood fence and gate and don’t feel guilty for once, or that it’s a provocation for others to take it out on me. I marvelled at my late sister laughing off her mistakes, whilst I felt inadequate, incompetent at mine. How did she do it? Don’t take life seriously is the lesson. Took me years to learn I defeat myself. Now I laugh at my incompetence, and remember her chuckle.
that was the colour he wanted for his room, his home, himself. Being transparent was the worst a bloke could be. A bloke has to be mysterious, give the lasses some work to do. Transparent meant you were predictable and boring. Then again his wife said he was secretive, kept stuff to himself, untrustworthy so that’s how he’d ended up in this one room flat, with a gas cooker that didn’t work, dodgy wiring and a microwave on the blink. Perhaps he’d reconsider the redecorating colour.
Many Thanks to Jamie Dedes featuring two of my poems
“One of My Tomorrows” and other poems in response Wednesday Writing Prompts https://jamiededes.com/2017/04/18/one-of-my-tomorrows-and-other-poems-in-response-wednesday-writing-prompts/ via @JamieDedes
Many thanks to Klaus at the great Outlaw Poetry for publishing five poems
memory keys from behind the cellar door
and retrieves the wheel of gratitude
from the landing of the unforgiving cellar steps,
places its plug into paid electric socket
his furry comfort slippers under a chair
puts on molded plastic sandals of consideration
opens the porch of opportunity into the garden
of undelight, ravaged by weeds of disconsolation
And the onset of unchecked abundance
turns memory in the lock of occasional visits
enters the garage of the unessential, but not
urgent to collect the editor of excess.
carries the cutter down steps of ill repair
unreeling the calculated wire of generosity
unreeling the cutters wire of restriction,
connecting both and pressing the plastic button
of limited destruction to start sharp blade
of reinvention around the edges of wildness,
Then manoeuvring in straight lines across the body
of untidiness and unwanted refuges and dumping the full bucket of them in the green recycling bin of official response. Editing complete wires reeled in,
a managed garden is admired by onlookers as cared for and the gardener as attentive to their design.
He tidies the edges with blades of definition
