My Poetry

Box 33

 

Time goes, you say? Ah no!

Alas, Time stays, we go.

Henry Austin Dobson

 

Once she sat on a bench, the sun warming

her arms as she read, now she’s on a cold

steel tray in refrigerated box no.33.

Usually hair and makeup before a photo shoot,

the mortuary is the studio, no beautification

required, just three bottles of whiskey

to bribe foolish attendants

for quality time with the passive model.

As always, she gave the photographer

what he wanted but not what he was expecting.

 

In the embalming room,

rolled onto her side, blonde hair

frizzed and brittle was hacked,

discarded carelessly to the trash,

along with the falsies that were unable

to disguise the damage of the autopsy.

The embalmer made a ‘Y’ incision

to reduce the swelling in her neck

before dressing her in her favourite

chartreuse Pucci dress. Breasts

were formed out of cotton

from the prep-room shelf.

With a flask of gin the grim

task of transforming a wretched carcass

back into the woman the world would recognise

took place. A blonde wig,

green scarf and a gift

of baby pink roses completed the story.

An assistant grabbed the remnants

of hair and falsies from the trash

stuffing his retirement fund into his pocket.

For two years after, when opening the bag

that contained her false breasts and hair

he could still smell her colgne

until it became Real Estate in California.

 

Copyright © Shar Daws 2009

 

 

To Go to Newport Pagnell (after Lvov)

 

To go again to Newport Pagnell, is to remember

dark red buildings, and wet pavements of glossy

grey. My teenage lungs gulping in the air

of a new belonging, a tight embrace

aching with ghosts, long dead, still living.

The old lady at The Green, weaving

a ball of wool around the aged trees

as if unravelling her past, in streams of yarn

catching on harsh bark, quietly singing.

Old Joe frightened the girls at the

school disco, no CRB check required

as his lips split into a smile, shuffling bones

towards tense figures. Freshly grown breasts

spilling over spandex boob tubes

A parting sea of jumpsuits and sequins

with Debbie Harry still hanging on the telephone

we hung on each other squealing

as old Joe unchallenged, slyly

swept through the assembly hall

doffing his cap in a gruesome

reminder of the cruelness of time.

Saturday night was Electra Night and girls swooned

for David Jones in drain pipe jeans,

barely remembering the movies,

just the softly murmured promises.

To taste first sex on Bury Fields cushioned on

springy grass, a whispering hint of

an uncompleted railway line,

under a canopy of azure sky.

Samuel Pepy’s came to Newport Pagnell

with his diary and lay well at the Swan, admiring

St Peter’s and St Paul’s ‘cathedral like’

appearance above the confluence of two rivers,

presiding over Marriages, Baptisms and Funerals,

a gift from Fulk Paynell and his wife Beatrix

to the Monks of St Mary’s Priory.

Here I cemented my devotion with marriage vows,

christenings, and first foundations.

We came to the Strawberry Fayre,

all ages, in a warm June sun

that offered us ripe fruit

bursting with blood and life, down

the chins of toothless children

and the Carnival in July, remember,

you were the Carnival Queen,

I was the Queen of Hearts

The procession bowing to

dancing, vibrating instrumentals

from the Red House to Riverside Meadow.

The air was sweet, sticky with pink froths

of candy floss and caramelised onions.

To ride the big wheel in stabs of screams,

to see the pickled babies, waxy white

in their preserving fluid.

Scorching summers stretching

lethargically towards autumn.

Sitting on scratchy banks

flicking our feet in cold pools

of brown water on the Poets Estate.

Byron, Shelley and Keats were just Drives to us.

Mrs Johnson our English

teacher educating us on the

subject of love, she drifted to Dubai

as we watched, elbows on hard formica

as she slipped under the skin

of a man nearer our age than hers.

In winter strings of coloured lights illuminated

drizzle drenched streets and the Christmas

market floods Cannon corner with the perfume

of polished chestnuts now clouded and smoking.

Squinting our eyes, blurring the scene

into ballroom dancers, billowing luxurious

skirts, bursts of red, yellow,

green and blue popping out from a black

velvet canvas, an acrylic abstract

of shimmering oils.

In Newport Pagnell everyone

is more of what they are, essential traits

drawn out by Osmosis.  

The house-proud wife collecting the crumbs

As they fall from her husband’s mouth

The smoker filling her ashtray,

flesh coloured tips resembling

a blunted porcupine alert to danger.

The air is thick with spirits.

The dead like tightly packed commuters

On the London bound train

squeeze closer for new arrivals,

working together to haunt the present

with remembrance of the past,

to keep the heart of Newport Pagnell beating still,

pulsing with strength through the veins each day

of those who live there, and those like me,

who have long since moved away.

 

Copyright © Shar Daws 2009