Issue 13: January 2007

Simon Barraclough | Dean K Farrow | Valerie Josephs | John Stiles | Tim Wells | Dean Wilson

DEAN WILSON

Stones Thrown Through Me

Let me be
your target practice,
your very own John the Baptist.

I'm a lonely boy
with a lonely boy's ways
in need of a hobby
to keep me sane.

So cover me
in cherry blossom
and watch bruises form
like they're going out of fashion.

It's a funny old world it is
and becoming funnier
by the second.

I'm highly strung
and come with a lot of baggage,
not to mention a slow-puncture
I've had since the ice-age.

Let me be
your moving target;
your reason for getting up in the morning.

 

East

We are only
four miles from Filey
and I am distantly related
to Dorothy Squires;

and your father
played football
in the forties
for Doncaster Rovers;

and last night
on the beach
while the sea had a fit,
you caressed and I bit.

Then later on
in bed watching telly,
you fell asleep in my arms
and it felt like I belonged;

but now,
let's go to where Butlin's once stood —
I went there every year
a long time ago —

and when we get back
I'll rake out some photos taken there
of me, my mam and dad
and my little sister.

 

IF

If I was a woman
I'd wear my hair
in a bun

and go about
my business
in a grey skirt
and beige cardigan.

If I was a woman
I'd live in a village
or at least the suburbs

where I'd attend
a knitting circle
and arrange flowers
in the church.

If I was a woman
home would be a bungalow
backing onto a field

that would hold
the summer fête
I'd organize with
the Ladies' Guild.

If I was a woman
I'd wear my hair
in a bun

and go about
my business
in a grey skirt
and beige cardigan.

 

Googie

She was big like you
only bigger,
six foot two
with a lovely figure;

but she overdid it
with the blusher,
and her hair
was in a worse state than Russia,

and she
wouldn't let
anyone touch her
in anyway whatsoever,

which at the time
I thought a bit sad,
but now I think she might have had
the right idea.