Two new sections

[rozk]

At some point, when I am closer to having a final draft, I will post the whole thing again.

Until such time, two poems from the Dark Side of the Roz; these demand other poems to give context of course. For now - and the Maitress poem 'Do not turn the head' comes between them, of course, all you need to know is that my unnamed lover moved in for a while on a not quite together not quite apart basis, and was seeing someone else, who was deeply jealous and eventually required that my lover move out, and not speak to me if we encountered in public. And in due course, they ended. So, two more episodes of this whole mess - I think that the poem as a whole is called 'Ashes', btw.

So -


7.
Small things
Small change on the table.
Bad cards.

I felt like macaroni cheese
Crisp on the top
Burned around the sides
Broccoli
Tossed in oil and lemon

Good hostess
good sport
good loser.
Almost parent
Saying wear your scarf
Smiling
Smiling
At her new love
Her new love smiling back
Pouring another drink
Wishing it were poison
Not really.

Half asleep
Door slams
Tipsy footsteps
Only one
Sob
Everything all right?
I'm fine.
Turn over
Almost asleep
Noise of waterglass
Rattle of pills
Everything all right?
I'm fine
A headache
Go to sleep
I don't know for how long
Suddenly awake
Too long a rattle
Dash into her room
Empty bottle
Note -'I loved you'
I don't think it was for me
but who can say?

So
Pull her out of bed
Haul her across the flat
Fingers down throat
Before I even slap her
Make her spew
And make her spew some more
And keep it in a box
Ambulance men
Impressed
I kept a box
Some half-digested pills
Some broccoli
And macaroni cheese
And beer, a lot of beer.

She didn't die
I saved her
Just.
High stakes
But love
Loving is always playing for high stakes
With bad cards and small change.

And yet again
For one more night
I win.




and
For just one night
To dance and kiss and smile
To hold the centre of the floor
To stare as if her eyes were all my world
To know and to ignore all jealous stares,
As lovers do.

Not hope and not despair,
ice calm.
Held in her arms
Her blade
Her perfect lie
to pierce and to undo.

Revenge
On all of them.
No,
Just on one -
who stands there hating
as she made me stand
and watching as she made me watch.
So many months
My hatred grew so cold
for her more than the rest.
She broke her word
To both of us and broke us
Utterly.
she'd have to do.

Not my revenge?
No, mine as well,
hers more.
Sharing her spite
Being of use
Dancing, intense
Each placing of a foot,
each movement of a hand
each longing look
a perfect lie and acid in the face
Precise in measure
stamping on the heart
that watches and betrayed.
Is closeness of a kind.
And it will do.

Outside, the frost.
Inside, chill certainty
that we will never be as we once were.
How ever far this goes
her icy hand mimes perfect heat
slid underneath my belt.
I gasp
My gasp is perfectly controlled
considered artifice
as are my lips,
whispering kisses to receptive ears,
and none are truth.
The truth would never do.

If we had never been
What we are not
We could not lie, we could not cut her heart
So surgically. We need to have been one.
Broken, quite broken,
Memory shows us how to move in pace
how falsely stare into each other's eyes.
Our watcher knows what she helped take from us
And so can be deceived it is restored
When it cannot be. Yet its shadow holds
Its shadow is our lie.
Our cold revenge.
Love's done and dead
so sad, and yet revenge,
its perfect mime
undead for these few hours
will dance those hours.
Not much, but it will do.