A Cage To Hold My Dreams
Summerlove
I wait at the bus-stop for the soft grey clouds
to pass overhead.
Tight-lipped old ladies with shrunken heads
and matchstick legs shuffle impatiently
like guests at a corpses' reunion
but I don't care about any of them.
I'm going to meet my summerlove.
My father thinks that I am at school
under the stern gaze of my headmaster
who looks curiously like Alastair Sim.
The bus makes the sound of a dentist's drill.
I can afford two downstairs seats at the Regal
and maybe a couple of choc ices, too.
Someone the size and shape of Anglesey
chases after the bus, hoping to catch it
at the traffic-lights. He collapses against
a lamp-post, gasping. A shopkeeper
helpfully undoes his tie. On the bus,
a neat woman in tweeds complains about
fare increases and the cost of butter..
The Regal is showing The Snows Of Kilimanjaro.
We pretend to leap into Ava Gardner's mouth
And slide back out through her giant nostrils.
My summerlove hates it
when I chew spearmint gum
but I do it because it helps me
to look as tough as Danny Macguire.
