Neuro Logical
Harrogate(Disrupted)- Barnaby Ashton- Bullock
Viv, old trick, emergent anew
like a verdant cliff top searing through
a tryst of tumbling mists
that smeared our long lorn latitude.
Viv, bowed, your hobble stick ticks the earth.
Viv, brilliance noir, anti-light,
smutched to pulp all our early life,
my every ode of love, frown fried,
all our ‘us’, ever on, denied!
this is a place where shop doors still have knobs
and we learn to shut them tight behind us
and where the nativity manger is a thing of wonder
and the plaster cast baby Jesus, a sacred beauty
and where the exalted recipe for the traditional
simnel cake is a jovially well-guarded secret
and where mulled wine and stilton
in the residence of a distinguished someone
is treasured with due discretion
and where, though one merely dabbled in the oboe
once upon a long ago,
one has remained staunch in support of the youth orchestra
even though it musters just three members,
two of whom are in their forties…
Viv, cantankerous,
your cankerous ash interned in urn,
your caustic, hospice tossed-off,
toss-mouthed, “oh, y’live, m’luv! y’fukkin’ learn!”
this is a place of treasured ornamental gardens
where the lonely feed ducks,
this a place where tea is ‘taken’,
where maidens can be still be ‘ruined’,
where men are civilised in the incessant descant of their ‘lady wife’s’ chatter
and where whispered rumination in tea-shops,
in semi-formal attire,
is accompanied by a pianist who reputedly played
in one of the top swing bands of yesterday
and the joyous twinkles in such beady eyes
as the cake trollies waft briskly by
really do belie
the truth that so many come here to die…
Viv! You convalesce, I scone-chew gurn,
For we, so full of play on jilting Stray,
Some other day! Some other day!