Up to Here with the Weather...

Cherry

By Silver Spun Sand

Sat, 11 Jul 2015
  • 1441 reads
6 comments
 
and up to here with him, along with all his bullshit.
 
He can’t abide me smoking in the flat; that’s why
I’m out here, on the roof, on this drizzly afternoon...
 
O.K.  I will pack it in – one of these days; cigarettes,
amongst a good few other things, bad for my health
but I guess they’re just something to hold on to...
 
...a bit like him with that glass of scotch he has
to have every night...along with the wine at dinner
and then there’s a couple of jars or so with the boys
on his way home.
 
‘So what’s wrong with packing it in right now?’
I ask myself – aiming the butt of, what could possibly be,
my very last fag, at an ink-black puddle; my fate decided
by the flick of a wrist.
 
If I get it in – that’s it.  I’m kicking it.  Used to be a crack
shot at netball, at least.
 
Down below – some brat slams his ball through a window
and someone yells for somebody called Tracey to get her arse
indoors – help her mum with the washing up.
 
Frozen to the bone, go back to the stairwell of this god-awful 
block of flats – the lift stinks of stale piss, so I’m not
using that! 
 
So here I am treading the selfsame steps that hope once trod
a year or so ago; love’s young dream and all that malarkey,
when we’d come up here, sit and dream – plan our life
together,
 
now look at me...on my tod – except for a mangy tabby cat 
that’s taken a shine to me, and a rubbish cigarette...
I can’t even throw straight.
Certificate 15
Poem
Silver Spun Sand Poems
Love
Inspiration Point (work that responds to our weekly writing cue)

Comments

Submitted by VeraClark on

Modern, colloquial, has a tang of people's moral advice in it and most of all, nails council estate life and is refreshingly upfront.

 

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on

Thanks for reading, Vera...and you, too, hit the nail, bang, on the head with your astute observations.

Tina

 

 

Submitted by Deliberately Ev... on

Very gritty and dismal. Captured the feeling perfectly.

The beat of your heart is the mellifluent rhythm to my soul.

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on

Thanks, Ae, greatly.

Tina

 

Submitted by skinner_jennifer on

Hi Tina,

a mixed combination of an exhausted, impoverished life, with feelings of not wanting to give up the only pleasure left, yet remembering a time when life was good.

Sad and very real.

Jenny.

 

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on

Hi Jenny...although not entirely autobiographical, the poem was based on some of my experiences as a child living on one of the first high-rise council estates in Southwest London, in the late fifties, early sixties.  I had shared a bedroom with my parents till we moved, and at just turned eleven, it was bliss to at last have a room of my own, even though it meant sharing it with my sister who was nearly four years older than me. Up until then, she'd shared a room with our auntie, so we were both much better off...or so we thought, then....but that, as they say, is another story.

Many thanks for your words, Jenny, which were, as ever, spot onsmiley

Tina