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Contests : Wergle Flomp Free Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2011 : Tim Goldstone
I MISS YOU BUT THERE IS SUCH A THING AS BANANA GIN
Like the blade of a wind-turbine slicing through a swan,
I think of you
While the rain outside my room sounds like all
The dogs in the world have suddenly decided to clean their genitals
At exactly the same time.
Lying asleep
They come to me in the night
Cross-eyed and drooling:
My teddy-bears
As dangerous as pregnancy testing Kit Carson
They flump and haul, and wheeze
And crowd with puffing lips
Themselves across the black floor to
Where I am (whale oil burns more brightly than pig-fat) naked
And they kick me with
Their bandaged paws, gently
At first, then faster
And I
Twitch
As though I think I am someone who has
suddenly remembered for the first time that my parents let me
Use the end of the barrel of a loaded shotgun with an unstable
Firing mechanism
To teethe on.
Therefore I am.
(I was prominent, you were dominant,
I was the one who inhaled)
He's Spartacus, look, just there, behind that rock.
I'll take you too him if you like, point him out to you,
So there's absolutely no mistake
Perhaps next time you will fill my bath with water
Instead of petrol
Before you place
The floating candle
And under your toxic shock of hair
Your frown, like a farmer who
(Before the gentle rustling of sheep in a breeze,
After bees swarming up ropes,
During the season for raising eyebrows)
Had set the ploughing equipment
Far too low
And then driven horizontally up and down your forehead
Or in clearer words you had a furrowed brow.
When you were nice
You fixed huge
Canvas sails
To the moon
And sailed it
Right down my telescope
Into my eye
But sometimes you were awkward
Like a man Doctor even though you weren't a man,
Who refuses to examine any man for prostate cancer
Unless they marry him in a civil ceremony
First.
Sometimes you'd surprise me, like a leopard
Hiding on a leopard print car-seat.
And things are not good down below where
I feel as though
I have sub-let my pee-hole to a family of scorpions
Each of whom for all of their lives have fed exclusively
On spanish
Onions.
And I was wondering
Would yoooz like to
Come to my
Room for tea?
At half-past seven
Or not?
Or three?
I've taken down the shrine
To make you feel more comfortable
This time
(Or perhaps I could establish myself in some form of papoose)
This poem was a finalist in the 2011 Wergle Flomp humor poetry contest sponsored by Winning Writers.
About Tim Goldstone
Poetry, short stories and articles published in various literary magazines, and included on BBC, Waterstone's, and Gloom Cupboard websites. Recipient of Welsh Arts Council short story masterclass scholarship. Prose sequence read on stage at The Hay Festival. Some material broadcast on BBC TV and radio, and performed in the theatre. Short story "A Stitch in Time" included in the forthcoming sci-fi and fantasy anthology Altered States. Travelled and worked throughout the UK, Western and Eastern Europe, including the former Yugoslavia, and spent time in North Africa. Currently writing out of rural Wales, living in-between the sea and the mountains, writing Peach Slices, a short story collection. First time Wergle Flomp entrant. Please drink banana gin responsibly.
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