New Boiler (Do More)
Nothing chills the ego
Shows how dreary things can get
Than two hours of a Tuesday
Spent in the laundrette
In there the ambitious flounder
In fact ambition flees
finds a metaphorical shot gun
Puts it between its knees
But the universe is a mystery
Dharma lies in those fragrant metal drums
This Tuesday held fate itself
Between its powder softened thumbs
Through a plastic washing basket
One panel kicked clean through
I saw a vision in acrylic
Pink hair in curlers
said she was 52
or maybe 53
she lied about being a backing singer
one time with ABC
She puffed upon a roll up
Blew smoke rings on my smalls
Took a bottle from beneath the tabard
Cleared her throat and drawled
Want a swig of frosty jack?
She offered, broke the ice
I’d been in there 90 minutes
I didn’t need asking twice
And off she went as we quaffed
and we chewed the fat
Of her cats n kids and weeping mould
Each a plague that ruined her
flat
Then the plumbing that rumbled
and the stench from out the pipes
The rent man she said was a rascal
Or something not so nice
I’ve rang the council a hundred times
For plumbing they’ll do fuck all
But it’s different if you’ve mice
They’ll be round once a fortnight then
Rats, they’ll make it twice
I was finding it hard
To want to go on living
Cider Gloom and Pink’s tales of woe
My joie de vivre had Joie de gone
Then she told a tale
That hit me like a stone
From her eldest’s catapult
“I saw my old man last week
He just appeared in the kitchen
He’s been dead five years
I shit myself
My eyelids would not stop twitching”
What the fuck
I thought I’d thought
It turned out in fact I said it
I know, the prick, That was me too
I said do you know you’re deaded?
“Did he speak?”
my eyes now wide
The dryers din now silenced
“Well sort of”
she whispered
Her fag smoke now a holy vapour
Wrapping her in mystery
from pink hair down to floor
He struggled and was raspy
He just said
DO MORE
I imagined what she’d seen
This octogenarian poltergeist
His long dead face all wizened
In that flat above the bookies
A fading ghost in puddles of ectoplasm
I felt the tearing of every last atom he had
In that
No
body
in nowhere
His Straining purgatorial persona
Every ounce of whatever he was
Boiled up in hellish fumes to go there
To Pink
One
Last
Time
All of that to whisper
To this princess in a tabard
Smoking Drum
Now was the time
To get it all done
A breath beyond the last allowed
Do more!
It cut me through like a jagged knife
This prophet from the afterlife
His words though few
Tolled all that’s true
A bell of doom
For me and you
He reminded me in that perfumed hell
Of lavender and alpine bluebell
That his words to Pink were for me as well
His bony fingers rapped out on his coffin lid
That today’s doing
Is tomorrow’s
I did
What this story needs is a dream sequence
And that my friends is what’s coming
A chance to escape the smell of fags
and stories about plumbing
I felt myself transported,
the Laundrette melting away
a kaleidoscopic universe of colours
swept open the self locking door
and me and Pink were away
We flew above the rainy clouds
found blue beyond the grey
kept climbing higher
and further off
and then
I saw us both
Me on the deck laid out and Pink
In charge of a speeding Schooner
Her hard brown arms taut like the ropes
She pulled skilfully toward her
In golden sunlight dolphins bounced in the wake
Of this streamlined streak of fibreglass and honey
Me and Captain Pink,
Her, the chieftain of the Med
Deep green eyes plotting our course
straight strong back and billowing locks
This goddess steered us toward the docks
We moored in Tangiers for Martinis by the bay
Had aperitifs in a jazz club
then camels
to her mountain hideaway
This poetess of insight
this harridan of hope
she swam in pools of turquoise
on this perfumed Moroccan slope
Her paintings hung about us
Sinsemilla filled the air
A harem of brilliant wildness
Sprawled on cushions everywhere
Songs of harp and calabash
Birdsong and sweet melody
Played sonnets dedicated to her eyes
Her voice
Her transcendent beauty
We listened as she read her work
The prize she’d won at Booker
While a contortionist danced through incense clouds
Entertaining these ephemeral fuckers
Pink, now resplendent in her silken robes
A caravan of acolytes
arriving now in droves
Every one brought precious stones
Meagre gifts
To the one that knows
The true workings of our human souls
Truly, these ecstatic pilgrims
would proclaim
No one could do more
in this earthly domain
I watched and waited for Pink’s address
And then a snap and no more tenderness
As the words came out
Bollocks, coin slot’s jammed and pinched my quid
All that was done is now undid
That perfect world remains not yet
I see I’m back in the laundrette
Pink is struggling
cider sweat in every pore
I ask what she thought
he meant
when he had said
do more?
I’ve not a clue. The daft old get
I bet he means ring the council
But he’s off his nut
if he thinks they’ll do owt
It needs
a new boiler.
