Fade

She was slight to begin with.

Pared down by worry,

Three kids and an errant husband

Who carried grass seed in his pocket.

Illness took the rest

until pills were the only food

I could push through purse-string lips

before inertia set her blood like stone

There were moments

when a young girl fell back into life

like a failed ghost

with hot ‘how dare you’ eyes.

Then, the words ‘let me go’!

became my own

She dared cancer try its luck

and take anything from a body

that had nothing left.

Right on cue an evil limpet

clamped its self to her fifth rib

where an empty breast used to sit

Stupid tumour starved to death

just before she did

prised off by some thoughtful surgeon

during luncheon

popped into formalin and filed away

just before she was

Dominoes ( Last night, vandals destroyed 150 headstones and monuments in a quiet village cemetery)

A domino theory, proved

in a pub-less, peaceful place

devoid of faded spots

and the back to back clack

of six on six.

No airless  gym

with  varnished floor

buffed to perfection

and filled with wooden warriors

as yet un-toppled

by the deftest finger flick

local wall-sitters,

bored with easy kickings,

bus  shelters

and laminated kiosks

wearing chap cider smiles

to 'impress the birds'.

moved on to the Graveyard

Follow my leader,

off-ground tick,

stepping, stoned, as

Dr Martens gripped the granite

smearing dated marble tombs.

First the ancients snapped.

Jutting yellow tongues

tasting their last meal

of rubber sole and grassy heel

Then the newly fixed and planted.

Presiding over some

hammock of earth,

cement still wet.

The jumbled names lay shattered

like a broken-biscuit  jigsaw .

A dazed daughter

and  weeping widow

exchanged a piece of sky

for  a piece of son.......

Yvonne

                                               

My heart came of age

One balmy sports day

When Yvonne won the hundred.

Her quiet perspiration made me sweat out loud.

I ached to touch her,

Not like my signed England cricket bat

Somewhere between my Princess Leia Poster

And our slate-grey Persian cat

Her buttocks rose like new proved dough

Held high with braided hair.

So thick and tight the

Gloss oozed out like blackberries

Wrung through muslin.

I never braved her orbit

But glimpsed her second hand

On the backs of spoons and polished floors,

In a finger-smudged brass escutcheon

Or the yawn of a classroom door

I the savant, she my time

Penning the need for her on every lesson.

Skirting conversations, like

An expectant father fielding questions,

Flies undone.

Years later

Tight with drink and starving

I found Yvonne shovelling chips to midnight bums,

Air thick with grease and chat-up lies.

Head bowed low,

Staring into boiling fat.

In the back room,

Pressed hard against a frosted pane

A young boy wore my face

With no appetite for pity

Wishing he was still at school