how to lose at Kimberly’s Game

how to lose at Kimberly’s Game

 

love is akin to gravity,

the weak force that embraces all,

that holds planets in thrall, much as

my cupped hand holds my lover’s balls

 

I wanted to write a story

about where I was when the bombs

began to fall, the smiling man

whose bearded face filled my crosshairs,

the trigger that I failed to pull

 

I have a title, but no words

to follow, do not know the rules

of Kimberly’s Game (she says rhyme

predicates a lack of reason)

 

the forecast is for snow, for winds

to sweep down from Siberia

and augurs that most English form

of hysteria, when we sow

rock salt across the marriage bed

and do not give a frozen fuck

 

let us return to love, to love,

to Hallmark verse and top ten songs,

to lists of virtues, lists of wrongs

and pretend drawn hearts make us strong

 

I have another tale to tell,

a sequel to a false account

of London in postmodern times,

whose ruins are a monument

to paranoia and cement

and faces monitored for crimes

not innocence, but the amount

of information they can sell

(remember pussy in the well?

she is still drowning, sound the knell)

 

I wake up when I want, when light

over-peeks the curtains and kids

scream all the way to school, while you

present me with your morning wood

 

love is not greatly understood,

the universe does not appear

to hold sufficient love to prove

its own existence, no matter

how nonsensical that may sound

 

no more fairy stories, no more

fairground rides, no coloured bulb lit

circles to wind the dark around,

no nights beneath the magic mound

 

it ends where love ends, where games reach

their conclusion, one final throw

of that weighted dice, that last piece

taken from the board, that marked card

sneaked back up my sleeve, that table

overturned, that fiddled score card

thrust into your face, you loser