Thursday 7 November 2013

You Must Have Noticed

(One more from the file of very old poems. This crept into a self-published pamphlet called "The Blues For Dummies" I only ever made about twenty copies of ten years ago.  It was a horribly designed, flimsy xeroxed effort which was supposed to have generated extra revenue from gig bookings, but in the end only used to earn me a few quid a night - perhaps because it looked so unpromising.

 Possibly in a bid to confuse my future self, there was also a poem called "The Blues For Dummies", but that never made the final cut for some reason.  Maybe I should try to find that somewhere among my piles of paper…)

Check “Last Ten Calls” on your mobile and
watch the jagged, dot matrix
parade of names of
cumbersome, beer gutted,
list loving single males
flick past your eyes.
Make a note of them.
This is your army.
Her name isn’t there.

“1471” the land line,
listen to the lilting female voice, the
only one you’ve heard
crackling down the line in a
fortnight, slide from sleepy
vocal ballet to eighties
Numanoid robo-jerk as she read off
your parent’s number.
Her number isn’t there.

Consider last conversations,
the chew of clicking chat,
innocent innuendo expanding,
remarks on new men she’d met
clattering like sharpened
flints of secrets from her
pocket which she toyfully
hid with her foot, protesting
their platonic status.
Your mind wasn’t there.

You’ve had your last warning.
She’s sick of waiting for you to decide.
She knows if it were up to you
you’d spend your whole life

waiting for the right time to surrender.

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