Owed to a discarded urn

One cruel night a white urn stood outside

the Wellington in the Strand, that boot on the foot

of Theatreland whose tide of patrony

goes out nightly on its raft of yearning

returning with punctured hopes, deflated,

to sink into bitter beside a cordial fire.

The tide goes out and there the urn stood

stoppered with sand with ashes on top

and below that, surely no one we’ve heard of,

remains of none whose name ever burned

in pearl-strung lights or neon, or even

played a full season, for the very next evening

it was gone, appearing for one night only.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet

Missing pieces

Your Andrew’s a dab hand at puzzles like this one

he said, mistaking me in his confusion for my father

his brother, whose death that once had shaken him loose

from domesticity, if not quite forgiven, had slipped

over some event horizon and thus never happened

We’re given these puzzles as if we were children

he said, with half the pieces already

missing it’s hardly our fault we seem a little muddled

Of course I remember when this one was taken

he said as if the photograph was from his own album

rather than some anachronistic library collection

Keep our little secret close, from the boy I mean

he said, your Mary would die if she suspected he knows

If my mother were still alive, I might have let it go

(c) 2013 Slush Poet

Lying in

The house next door to ours,
where the old man often turned
his telly up so loud my dad
would holler at my mum until
she banged the walls or started
shouting too or began to cry, was
exactly the same as ours except
laid out entirely backwards - in the hall
where the staircase should have been
was instead the half-shut door
to an anti-living room where
the curtains were tightly drawn
and the telly wasn't even on, all
quiet for the old man lying down.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet

Inconstancy in a stolen smile

I’ll forever wipe that unchaste
smile from your face, I thought
as, while she slavered lies
through a hydroxyl haze, I slyly
slid a kitchen knife into

a bag of peas in the freezer
and garnered ice for her nightcap.
Sleep tight, cherub, tonight the bugs
might not be all your anaesthesia
will be keeping you dead to.

While she slept I basted her
open lips with agave tequila, slipped
cotton swabs imbued with vodka
neatly between her lips and gums
and when I judged her fully numb

performed a facial labiotomy.
The bleeding I contained with the aid
of bulldog clips and improvised sutures
using fluorocarbon fishing line.
I stored her severed lips in vinegar

and placed the jar on the mantelpiece
where I could watch her smile
fade away at my leisure. By dawn
they were wan, but the broadest grin
adorned my wife’s astonished face.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet

My damaged pride and joy

In the crash my hood was crumpled
like a discarded sock
or like Zebedee coiled to pounce
but with no spring in him, stuck
fast in his fluted compaction.
All those nights of fervent waxing
buffing up to a blushing shine
you could see your face in
brought to a perfect lustre
with an urgent kneading action;
those early risen mornings
tending to the throbbing
lump below, some lubricant here,
a quarter turn of a screw there,
or just gazing at it in wonder.
And now—
She blames me,
says I should look further ahead
and keep both hands
where she can see them.
I wouldn’t mind but it’s been years
since I last took her out for a ride.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet

The hard stuff

The dealer sat uninvited
beside my wife at our table,
a glass bottle in his fist,
and slurred in mocking accents
honed with menace and spite.
He glared if I interrupted.
My wife wasn’t spared
his hot breath on her ear.
I pushed him away when he
licked her face, but I didn’t
hear what he whispered
up close about her cunt,
and then to dispel any doubt
he was simply dumb drunk
said I see you at the gym,
winked and left for a smoke.

(c) 2013 The Slush Poet

The great key

It is colder than the thermometer claims

as we near the end of the season

the season of dying

the fall

felt all the more keenly for fasting

hunger leaves space for faith.

The gate lies open

and the inscription above bids me enter.

Music comes from within

although no service is in train

and standing here on the threshold

only ancient oak separates me from God

but the door stays closed to me

the great key was turned from the other side.

(c) 2013 The Slush Poet