H is for Hackney

 
‘I had to give up the stand up,’ I told her,
As she checked the buttons on her shirt.
‘I was … too funny,’ I said.
‘People were getting hurt. Cracking ribs and that.’
'You're weird,' she said
She held a hand up to one eye and looked at me as though through a lens.
'Always different, always the same,' I replied.

The gig hadn't gone well for Mick the Mic and
She’d found me at the bar after the mic had been pulled.
After I'd been told to go take a hike.
'Your act is certainly … different,' she sighed
‘And different sticks in your head.'

Her head came close to mine
So close that her fuzzy hair tickled my cheek.
‘What about Edinburgh?’ she suggested.
‘What about the Fringe?’
‘What about another drink? I said, and she took out her purse.

‘I live with my mum,’ I lied.
‘God help her,’ she replied, and
That’s when I leaned forward and kissed her.
Kissed her on the lips in Biddle Bros.
Lips that tasted of beer and kettle chips,
And as the bar parrot screeched in my ear
She whispered in the other, ‘I’ll do anything but THAT!’

Outside, in the Hackney night,
A sign in my van said, No Tools Left Overnight,
And I opened her door like I was a gent,
Like it was a Jag, and
Drove her to my filthy basement flat.

The next day we walked down to Tesco
Where black men with their trolleys
Cleaned cars with their rags
And I asked her again what she thought of my act.
She linked my arm and reminded me
That there are more poets in the world than people who read it.
‘Stick to being different,’ she said, ‘and maybe tonight
I'll think about doing THAT.’
Whatever THAT is.