Another day, another cheery poem. I used this to close the night at the Wenhaston Star. It did the job well. Total silence, then clapping. Which was nice.
Then a bald-bloke barring my way out of the pub who wouldn’t let me go past until he’d said how much he liked it. It’s odd, I’m getting a lot of positive feedback (which I’m almost sure isn’t the kind of thing they’d say) from what look to me like the most unlikely people. Mostly with shaved heads. Mostly a lot bigger and tougher-looking than me. All of them visibly moved by my stuff, delivered by me. It’s been described rather flatteringly as raw and hypnotic. I think it’s something to do with telling honest stories about how people feel, in a way that men traditionally don’t tell them, or not in public, anyway.
That’s just my theory. I might be wrong. You could discuss it with my hard-looking fans if you like, out the back of the pub. Because they liked this one.
These Are The Last Things
This house is going now,
Boxes packed, the vans booked,
Exchanging soon and these,
These are the last things
From my garden cooking.
Courgettes from the summer
That we shared sitting
Talking until late.
Until really it was much too late
For either of us to pretend,
Or for you to go home again.
This was my best Summer.
The summer of you and your dogs.
And your nose. And your voice.
And your hair. And your bent toes.
And just you, really. Just you.
And now I don’t have any of those things
With me almost every day.
Now I never know if, when I see you
In the street you’ll say hello or turn away;
It’s not just that it hurts me.
Not just that I don’t think
I deserved that. I make excuses for it
To my friends. It’s the way you are.
The way I was.
You’ve been through a lot, you know?
And yes, of course I talk about it.
It hurts so much too much not to
And I find that if I don’t then I cry.
But often, much more often than men are supposed to,
Alone in what will not be my house,
I cry anyway, for losing you.
In the kitchen, mostly.
Near the place between the oven and the fridge
Where you told me that you loved me.
So these, these are the last things.
(c) Carl Bennett 2014
No, I’m fine, I’m fine. Honest.
