Category: love

Tommy Robbins and Yvonne Bloo

TOMMY ROBBINS 

 

I’m not a poet.

I don’t even know why I’m writing these lines.

But it seems the best thing to do.

I’ve got to man up,

Stop fumbling a greeting 

Each time she swings past.

The smell of her!

As a kid, I’d roll in the fields,

Crushing the tansies and chamomile

Beneath the back of my Marvel tee;

Their scents spilt all over me,

And I’d lie in them,

Somehow assured that school

And Paul’s cancer and my lost iPod

Would be alright.

That’s how Yvonne smells.

She’s periphery too.

I think we’d understand one another,

If I could just muster an ice

Breaker. I remember when we

Brushed arms. My dark and her pale hairs

Pulled for one another.

I was too shy to apologise.

 

 

YVONNE BLOO

 

These boys-not-men,

These less-than-gentle,

These eyes-not-on-my-eyes.

I hear their filthy dreams,

Conceived each minute

In flush and heat and thighs.

Momma told me, she told me,

The quiet ones are the worst.

And that Tommy Robbins is quiet.

I’ve seen his gawks and ogles,

His nostrils when I’m near.

He’s lust in a pinkish shell.

Last week he touched me,

TOUCHED ME!

I know I heard him moan, 

Like a conscience tasting delicious sin.

He must think about me too;

In his mind he’ll have defiled me 

A hundred ways,

As a quiet boy’s mind will.

Well, he’ll not spoil me in

God’s

Eyes much longer.

I’m up now against his window jamb,

Carrying Pa’s hammer.

The Sun’s Jealousy

The sun did not rise today —

No —

He pounced unannounced,

Shouldering his jealousy

Into the unguarded Earth.

He’d seen, you see,

How she seldom shied

From the lips of the breeze;

H’d noted too

The chiselled moon, 

And how he’d come early,

Adorning the blue.

So as long as he might,

He kept his lover in sight,

Stifling her surface

With a cloying love bright.

Her grass he yellowed,

And my skin pinks,

Blushing until, reluctant,

He sinks.

Gone

“No, no, there’s nothing left here.”

 

My arms, I crossed them.

I’d been cheated.

I was ready for spite, salted spite.

 

“No, no, there’s nothing left here.”

 

In the chest: deflation.

I’d been stirring the brew into

The early hours, when you might as well

Be a dream.

 

“No, no, there’s nothing left here.”

 

I span, saw, and knew it to be true —

There was nothing left here.

Adults Who Ride Scooters

The most beautiful woman he’d seen,

Dead or alive

(Or, at the very least, top five).

From the wheel of his Cooper

He wanted to toot her,

To evoke winged Cupid

And have the blind boy shoot her.

He needed her like new tenants

Need a wireless router,

Would gladly be neutered

To denude her of couture-

One problem.

This goddess, this starlet,

Companion of his future,

Was a grown-ass adult,

Riding a scooter.

A Love Story

He was a baker,

She was gluten-free,

By all accounts

Their love

Was never meant to be.

 

Each day the baker

Felt keenly her lack;

Why, in God’s name,

Did he

Love a coeliac?

 

But then the baker,

Sick of being glum,

Baked a new bread

Of brown rice flour

And xanthan gum.

 

She bought the whole loaf,

Dispelling his woes,

And ate it unbuttered

(Being, as she was,

Averse to lactose).

 

But now the milkman,

Ostensibly coy,

Makes his own play,

Stocking,

I hear, ten pints of soy.

Some Things I Like About You

Some things I like about you:

I like that in the past 

We’ve probably crossed paths 

And can laugh about that now.

I like that you’ve roved 

To the other side of the globe 

But build your Hadrian’s Wall

At Newcastle.

I like that you don’t stroll 

Without a definite goal 

In whose direction to direct your sole.

I like that you compare it to skiing.

I like that I smile before seeing 

You, and all the way through.

I like that you look like Oona Chaplin.

I like grappling with you on destiny 

And knowing you’ll get the best of me.

I like that your eyes dilate with late light

I like 

But to like more would be treason:

I call them Shorter Poems for a reason.

A Depressing Thought

I heard a rumour that the proper realms of poetry are Love and Death. Well, I’m only twenty-three, so I won’t be talking about death. And I find myself under an encroaching suspicion that love operates in a similar manner to memory. When you remember an experience you are not remembering an experience. You’re recalling the latest recollection of that experience. Like a photograph of a photograph of a photograph. No matter how good the camera, you’re still haemorrhaging pixels. What if love is the same? You get one shot. And every subsequent love is a sketch of the first. the sketch may have been done in a steady hand, with a Blackwing on paper of 120gsm. But it’s a sketch nonetheless. It’s taken from a model.