The Man with the Fish Tattoo

She knew, only too well, all she meant to him
was ‘his bit on the side’, when he was home
on leave. All her ‘bits’ in just the right places,
as he’d said a hundred times; which was more
than one could say for him – a statistic, waiting
to happen. In the army he’d done his fair share;
a stint in Afghanistan, till they pensioned him off,
Saw one of his mates blown to pieces, and OK –
so he liked his drink, but he could take it
or leave it. Full of shit, that man.

She knew, only too well, she was a nobody –
just a singer, of sorts, and a girl who danced
a silver pole in a joint the wrong side
of town, shacked up with a loser...she
who loved nothing more than to listen,
to her old seventy-eights; Mario Lanza,
Mantovani. They don’t make music like that,
not anymore. She deserved something better,
but she had her dreams. And anyway

he wasn’t all bad...he had his moments,
and she was addicted to him, as he was
to his booze. Like water off a ducks back –
the things he’d do, the names he’d call her,
but the word ‘whore’ cut deep, and the blood
stained her skin, and the scar never healed.
But each time she decided she’d jack him in,
she’d come back – be engulfed by his tsunami,
his calm after the storm...his ocean; blue,
broody, or boiling.