November
2006
Swallow
All that effort
on a effortlessly, carelessly clashing
set of hunted down like your
aunties did in the co-op clothes they probably wore
too; but now to a club and found
two pills in some guy’s tight
jeans pocket or mouth and the projected
circling shape-lights are falling
like neon, dripping and
calcifying, high-watt cream creating a fragmented
shell of sparking sunspots on a strobe flash-frozen statuesque
flesh, staring to the gods, wanting all the time for those tubes of
perfect colour to fall and swallow us.
Swallow all those leather encased, cotton-encased,
polyester limited edition
Ts-encased everyones, into our darkness
gulp down feet in 3 for 5 pound retro H&M socks,
and too tight 10 quid boxers chafing cocks.
Swallow our mam’s belt, a father’s now fashionably
unfashionably William Morris-esque
wallpaper ties on all those in tune with it guys, their hands
under the table and now even further
in between your thighs.
The girl with the half shaved beautiful bony
head is swimming in the dance floor’s static.
Some boy is dripping saliva down her chin,
watching each pixellated strobe flicker with his eyes wide open,
illuminating on the girls in stained soaked tights
as sores grow on rubbing thigh-tops,
heels trickle blood and tendons ache. You glance
up and smile into under her heap of sodden mascara
watch lipstickless lips, terrified perhaps or not really there,
ready to unload stomach through smiling teeth at that camera,
and the floor is slippy, the table is sticky,
and your hair is sweaty and you bet me,
watching eyes mostly closed
as he wanders the floor making
no hints again, bet me that
the glass-collector is up for some.
Sit on his knee and powder
your nose so it doesn’t matter that
you think you’re fat,
go to the toilet and nose your powder,
until you wake up cold and damp on the couch.
Were you there all night. It was class
but.
[This piece has been adapted through performance.]
4 Responses to “Swallow”
There’s loads I like about this. I love the homely details - the aunties’ co-op clothes, the 3 for 5 pound retro H&M socks, “you bet me … that
the glass-collector is up for some.” Great idiomatic stuff.
And I could have told you were a Geordie from the last line alone, but giving “but” its own last line is a master-stroke.
I have to say I found the images of night-club life disturbing, but my night-club days are way beyond me. And my children’s are ahead. Now that is disturbing.
Anyway Tom isn’t a Geordie. He’s too posh.
I think its a bit desperate.
The alliteration and assonance in this poem stitch together the sordid character to a horrific T. A great angry thunder-cloud of a poem, tinged with irony.