They used to say with a knowing wink, when they had finished with your hair, 'And something for the weekend?' meaning, in babershop code, French Letters. These were normally displayed in packs of 3, prominently on the counter next to the shaving brushes, football pools coupons and micro-thin razor blades that made your blood run cold just to look at them.
Poet-in-Residence's Something for the Weekend is something else - a humble offering from his own poetic quill. Have a good one.
Tram Ride
The girl with black hair
is a girl with black nails
and a silver skull with ruby eyes.
She has a black plastic ring
and an old thin silver ring
and a new-looking wider silver ring with
scrolled writing on it.
Her long fingers cradle
a thousand pages of
Metempsychosis.
What's within the pages of your book?
I'm almost tempted to ask.
I try to imagine
the appearance
of her bent-down face
as I gaze at her tiny rosepetal ear
and its silver spiderweb ear-ring
softly dangling -
is she beautiful...
or ugly?
Approaching the terminus
she suddenly snaps
the strange book shut. And
jams it into her yellow bag.
A bag which I feel
contains a black cat.
She gets up.
She's beautiful. Like
heaven.
c-2008 Gwilym Williams
Wonderful.
ReplyDeleteI hope that she didn't feel that you were stalking her.
Glad you enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteIt's fascinating to observe the various characters who travel on the city's trams. P-i-R is something of a 'people watcher'.
Stalking? Heaven forbid!!