Going Down on Cherry

Cherry

By Michael Valentine

Sat, 04 Apr 2015
  • 892 reads
2 comments
 
Going Down On Cherry
 
Tonight, I’m going down on Cherry
Just to get Caitlin’s bitter taste out of my mouth
With a sunset shout, she fucked me over up north,
So on a torn futon-couch, I’m taking Cherry down south
 
The commercialisation of art
And the vanities of untrue love
Make me squirm in me seat;
Clench the muscles in my bum
But there’s a high and thick haze in the air tonight
As Saturday night becomes Sunday morning
When the distant winter sun shames our naughtiness by dawning
And the weekend gangsters return to suburbia and a comfortable life
All you and I can afford is honky-tonk in a Linwood underpass,
Harmonies on the damp coast of Hartlepool
Man, since we were born without a class
Methinks we oughter become drops in the ocean and get back to school
A son and a daughter
Beating out some anally tense boogie-woes and boogie-woos
Paying tuition with a summer of black and purple blues
Because I’m becoming so weary of drifting in disdain
With a skyful of dead poets and Caitlin’s bitter taste
So it might not solve the puzzle (but bring joy, temporary)
I’m choosing lust over love and going down on Cherry
 
Barbed-wire oscillations and strawberry tarts
Sea-salt scars, from chippy scuffles outside the pub
I’m battering the beaten pavement ‘neath my blistered feet
Searching for night’s fire and a tot of supermarket rum
All the while, inhaling the thick and high haze along the river Clyde
As adoration becomes something akin to playground hate
The empty, smoking streets dream of shutting down the steamy grates
And I wonder, “Where might I go at this Machiavellian time?”
All I can afford is the touch of my friends and a whiff of passing grass
Holidays in the rain; soggy bags of chips in Blackpool
Cherry and I exist in the forgotten British underclass
That birthed nothing but cadged fag-ends and broken bar-stools
I feel vibrations set in stone; entire estates, voluptuously vibrato
As cider spills in next-door’s caravan, painted like an Alpine château
Cherry’s tonic, wrapped in wry cellophane smiles, lingers for days
It haunts my dreams until a smoking-barrel tempts me to blow it away
Her mini-skirt waddle may be fickle but aren’t we so merry?
Tonight I’m tie-dyed, fish-finger pied;
Tonight I’m tongue-tied going down on Cherry
 
There may be imitations of our beating hearts
Obscenely clad in tragedy, but otherwise in the scud,
 Oral intimacy, waxing lyrically, it may seem indiscreet
But she chased thunder, cried downpours and climaxed with a thud
Don’t follow me to the garden; I’m choking on a thick haze tonight
And if I say I love you forever, will I be held to it in the morning?
Cherry, you’re no good but I’ve always romanticised the wrong ‘uns
Let me drink your wine and flood the room in deep, scarlet light
Yes, I know it may sound unfair, uncaring, cold and crass
But since I am not human, I’ve no reaction to the cruel
And since you and I were born without a class
We oughter party like we’re already dead
(And work our bodies like neglected mules)
Our lifeblood is caffeine and alcohol; our death’ll be pills and glue
Coming down, I’ll think of you, and off to work after this brew
In a townful of marginalised politics, I am tainted with Caitlin’s bitter taste
It all leaves a nihilistic lust for choosing life again
So it might come to break my heart, cramp my neck and leave me bleary
But it was my greatest idea that night, to go down on Cherry
 
I should have warned you from the start
Of all the profanities of untrue love
My body’s a mess but my vodka is neat
And Caitlin cut the wire when push came to shove
She inhaled a heavy and high haze in the air that night
As I solemnly emptied my bedroom for something worth pawning
A forgotten sentiment, a lusty regret and pure longing
I found a knife’s edge and a torn pair of tights
But I can’t afford to sell off all the bonny flaws which give me tact
The braw and bricht paintings I coloured by numbers back in school
I’m recalling a lifetime of naivety; it’s an arduous task
A nation of wolves and my own heart:
Two precious things that I’ve accepted I’ll never rule
Because mauling and romance always happens, to me, in twos
Our graveyard fucks and farewells; our protests run rivers of blood, piss and booze
The sticky embraces and awkward morning coffees all go to waste
When I realise Cherry’s cunt holdeth just as bitter a taste
But London Bridge is scorched and the captain went down with his ferry
So I’m sinking my life’s design in tequila and going down on Cherry
Certificate 18
Poem
Bullets at the Ballet
Drama
Biography
Humour
Love

Comments

Submitted by london_calling79 on

Filth. Self-destructive. Nihilistic. Loved it.

 

Submitted by Philip Sidney on

Bleakly scrabbling around for pleasure, snap shots of the dark hours.