three poems
Little Miss Simplicity
Why did you fuck him?
He had money.
Why did you dump him?
I’ve had my share.
What ‘bout his wife?
They weren’t happy.
What ‘bout his children?
Don’t know or care.
Little Miss Simplicity
Sitting right across of me
Palms folded in her lap
A hell-withholding tap
So, why start this therapy?
They told me to.
What d’you want from it?
See less of you.
Perhaps I can help you – to end this strife.
No-one can help me – my strife is life.
Little Miss Simplicity
Sitting there so candidly:
Golden hair shot with sunshine
Golden eyes shot with hate
Golden skin shot with oh so many touches
set and pimped by fate…
Golden voice shot with conversations
muffled by goldollar mist
Golden nails dug into flesh…
Pale-gold scars there on your wrists…
My Little Miss Simplicity
Why don’t you tell me then:
With all this training as golddigger
With all that shots to date;
That night when you were at home alone
And your Beast rose from its den
Why did you fail to pull the trigger?
Why did you hesitate?
End of relationship
At two-thirty in the morning
The garbage can got its shot
It gulped and shuddered
Then burped happily
On the half-a-bottle of best red wine
Hurled from the open
Window
At quarter of three in the morning
The garbage can got a bite
It chewed carefully and spat out
Some papers
Red roses agreed with the wine
But the letters proved
Indigestible
The garbage can felt plastic blue
Bubbling bluesy baby-blue
Its flat face shimmering
With dirty fluorescent paint
Drawn by a stray spray artist’s hand
Sometime
At three o’clock in the morning
A man of no consequence
Stopped in the yard
Cigarette in hand…
Say, man, is that the end of it then?
Green
What would you have, I asked
When we went down for lunch
Green peas, she said, and salad
A salad with green peas
Picking the peas from the pod
Silently slicing the salad
You should have a necklace like that
A necklace of green peas
She smiled at me
She was wearing beads but they were brown
Glittering stones of some kind
Think of so many eyes that follow her
Each time she walks the streets
Thread the eyes onto a string
Glittering eyes of some kind
Hannibal would have the tiger’s eyes
She says human ones are enough
Pushing the peas away
You’ve turned all green she says
Green with jealousy
