Funfair #1

In a first for this here Gander, I shall post what, by means of its lines not reaching the edge of the page, must surely be a poem. It was written some two years ago; it's almost ready to walk. But not quite.

Funfair #1

What are these toffee-apple questions that you’re asking?

Funfair, just where? that’s what I’m asking…

Candyfloss! (We might as well…)

Trouble comes whispered as you lie half-sleeping

Before it closes –

(It’s a jittering grizzled influence on half-sleep

In the morning – hard to analyse)

-- We may be talking dreams, but it’s all consciousness --

Why are you dreaming of the funfair, sister?

What dodgem schemes are up your sleeve

That you don’t know?

Candyfloss? We might as well –

You’re sticky and I’ll lick it off you,

Grease the tunnel of love now don’t be vulgar…

Dreams are inevitably analogue…

The subject, unsurprisingly, the object, worryingly,

Changes – changes – changes…

Candyfloss… get sticky… let’s lick and roll… let’s go round

merry… candyfloss… we might as well…

Get sticky, put your sticky toes in my mouth…

Ride dodgems, war with other children…

Would you like a cigarette?

Let’s smoke behind

The bike shed, baby,

What’s this funfair with a bike shed,

Are you dreaming?

Candyfloss, we might as well… eat it?

Suck it slurp it wake the neighbours,

Dribble down your chin all pink and – sticky!

Now it’s dripping down the cleft of your buttocks,

Now it’s rising in this carousel,

The pinkest tide of your sweet spittle,

Rising – sticky! And it’s reaching

To our noses, how much longer can we last?

Candyfloss? We might as well here as

I dive into the mess and lick your

Tiny anus, but not clean.

February 2006

Packet of Twenty

Between the chains of opportunity, somewhere, and the pitfalls of potential, in the midst of plimsolls and satchels, Mary bought a packet of twenty. She’d smoked the odd one at parties from acquaintances, her first on the building site, surreptitious, she’d liked it, liked them all, she never coughed, well, maybe spluttered, but she liked them so she bought a twenty packet from the racket on the platform that would sell to girls in plaid. She liked to smoke so Mary smoked, and in the pub with weekend feathers, Mary drank with older girls and passed and rose to any challenge that she was a schoolgirl.

Time has passed now; Mary has passed too, out of her school and into the dream lethargic as life. From phony potential to the jealousy of words, Mary’s mind can skip objective, drinking wine and smiling cigarettes and stretching limbs on waking, impassive as dawn.

I married Mary, not because she coughs now and she doesn’t like it, nor because she drinks like breathing and it’s ordinary, but because she eats a second breakfast or she doesn’t eat at all if she doesn’t fancy lunch, and she has a fine laugh, and she smokes the same cigarettes as me.