A glass of water please.
In the sweltering heat my mouth was parched
And then comes a woman of 20 or so
She doesn't walk; she kind of crawls.
A thick knitted tea cosy for a hat.
A strapless tube around her breasts
Hanging near to her waist
Suggesting sucking babes.
Shorts exposing thick sturdy legs
With muddied boots.
Drunk or drugged I could not tell.
Her broad face wreathed in a smile
Showing the largest teeth I had seen
Hanging in the smallest mouth
With huge gaps between each monstrous tooth.
She turned to the aboriginal man wearing
Thick, black glasses and legs like charred sticks.
She was the oddest person I'd seen
And I wondered at the Creator's ways.
C'mon, darling, this is your game, don't yer know'?
She yelled at him.
I turned my face awqy before she caught my stare.
She sits, he sits
On the plush settees
She attends to her diary
He gabbles on his mobile
I turn my head to
Gaze out the window
To the street and passersby
Intently aware of my head and neck
As it swerves around
And I think what an extraordinary
Thing to do.
To twist my head
It reminds me I exist
That there is a thinking, feeling
Person inside this body
That laments and celebrates
All at the same time - moving
With the struggle towards infinity
Then he turns his head
And I see the folds of neck flesh
She does the same
The place reeks of mortality.
Childhood joy of you singing a flower song
And the memory pushes me along
As I play Bach by the open window
To caress the petals in slow slow slow
And render recall along a fme wing
That glitters in the mind that wants to cling
To the singer who sang those years ago
And I was a blind child who crouched too low
To understand the melancholy - no.
Now purple -rippling tries to make it so.