The Poetry Kit |
| David Turns | |||
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Early Morning
Girls
We sit on the hard
sidewalk-
watch corroding
cars slide on by,
half honking horns
of quick-fire-recognition,
muffled shouts and
frantic arms…
a parade of party
people in a place which has lost all order.
charity shops,
tattooed ex convicts
and gold
ear-ringed girls pushing prams-
big dogs on hard
metal leashes growl, against a backdrop of bleak little homes,
january grey alley
ways which lead into black-
the shock of
colour of her pink mini skirt,
the bold lipstick
and sway of her hips,
her eyes tell
stories from late last night
and until another
hidden moon/
she will go
through the motions ‘til afternoon,
when the drugs
will cease to be
and she will sleep
until the stereo five-doors-down
rocks her awake
and it will be time for more-
seventeen-year-old-party-whore with a story to tell.
my gaze retracts
(straight back) to the girls I am with,
old friend in a
headband, close cropped hair and shining eyes;
she talks
excitedly to the fair haired girl,
tiny corduroy
skirt and stretched t-shirt over ample breasts.
they break off for
a heavy-hip-hop-beat,
dance down ‘n’
dirty in the fragmented street
and then return to
their earlier conversation-
same as each day,
same as forever but said with a smile,
said in a wild way
which burns me up,
which makes me
feel more than I have for years,
which makes me
bask in the sheer brilliance of it all-
the sleeping on
floors,
the corrugated
doors and mottled dirt–strewn-carpets,
dead rooms in
tower blocks
and mean places
which never end/
menace lurking
around each bend
but with them i am
free-
i am everything i
hoped to be.
the freckled girl
takes my hand
and i am in love,
tattered locks of
rose gold hair/
clothes flung on
with little care;
as feral as the
moment-
eating the gusts
that blow her from one sad place to another,
she makes bearable
what is not,
she makes sense of
the senseless
and surrenders me
gently to sheer the chaos of it all.
i stare at her
thighs and sigh-
smiling back/ she
takes me to her car,
we ride around
this place (two girls bouncing in broken car seats)
singing along to
banging beats,
twisting through
the barren boulevards and beyond-
stopping by the
tragic shopping mall/
closed up stores
and post office queues,
young mothers
smiling acknowledgments as my two princesses pass;
it is then she
turns to me,
radiant, rose gold
and charming freckles,
“we could go to
my place?”
there are places i
need to avoid
but her place
isn’t one of them!
we walk hand in
had in the setting sun
and everything
else continues on.
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