Maureen
Jivani
© Maureen Jivani 2009
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Celebrate
Eschewing
the funeral
odour of lilies I choose
yellow tulips; their scent
discernable only at nose
length, I bow my head.
Bi-Polar
He
arrives from the dead –
smiles to decompose the world,
and he gabbles at every stranger he meets,
inviting them for a drink or a smoke,
or a fumbling fuck in a nearby park
until
he can’t bear it. Blades of colour
on every tree, enough to blind.
So he digs himself a knot of worms,
resurrects his scowl, then breathes
as he wriggles under the bedding,
buried again.
Schadenfreude
You’re
watching back to back recordings of Springer;
I’m wondering what you look like naked,
whether your
loose sweats hide a car-crash or a temple. On
screen,
Sally prepares herself for the results of her
lie-detector
and will soon have to decide if she’ll keep
the baby
meanwhile Rufus wriggles in his chair. Gerry’s
steel
eyes flash at the screen – Can we imagine
the life this child
might have giving his coke habit and her low self-esteem?
You shake your head; throttle a Red Bull, say,
some people
need to be drowned at birth, and that you’ve
taped Celebrity
Rehab, if I fancy it.
Because
I
misquoted: ‘there’s the moon trying
to look appealing’,
and you declared it, ‘A comprehensible try.’
Why
is
what you never asked.
I took your hand and kissed
your mouth, regardless.
Abandoned
Lovers Clog up Slip Road to M25 at Jct 3
And
look here they are, moving about in traffic,
others stock still on the tarmac, dressed as vampires.
They’re sure to cause an accident
Look how the Pauls mouth the sound the wind makes.
Grahams sing you country and western songs,
Mikeys hurl themselves beneath your wheels.
But take one eye off the road and you’ll
find them flown,
perched in trees, surveying the wreckage, as you
cling
to the wheel, burnt rubber singeing your nostrils.
So just drive on through and don’t look
back,
tune your radio to Kiss FM and sing along.
They’ll stake out your heart if you let
them.
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Maureen
Jivani
© Maureen Jivani 2009
