Wednesday 20 May 2015

Anyway

You said you loved me more than cake –
   I doubted your intentions.

You said you longed for me the way
sandpaper longs for knuckles –
   I wondered what this meant.

You said you’d wait for me until
the stars themselves had vanished –
   I thought this quite unlikely.

You said that you had carved our names
across I won’t say where –
   I hoped you used a mirror.
     
I said I did not need the promise of the moon –
   you said I couldn’t have it ‘anyway’.

Friday 1 May 2015

Banality

You yearn to pulverise a bag
of Walker’s cheese and onion crisps
with your bare fists, shouting, ‘Take that,
you bastard cheese and onion bastards.’

The first blow proves to be decisive:
the bag explodes at either end;
the crisp diaspora has spread
too far. This isn’t good enough.

You’d only got as far as ‘...that!!!.
You find the packing tape, repair
the bag, replace the crisps, then wind
the tape around the bag some more.

The second, third, fourth, and fifth blows
prove far more satisfactory.
The strengthened bag’s resilience
impresses you. You get a hammer.

Not wanting to destroy your kitchen,
you take your bag of crisps outside
and place them on a Black and Decker
Workmate, where they await destruction.

You hammer crisps and swear out loud
all afternoon till all that’s left
is your undoubted mastery
over a bag of Walker’s crisps.