Seckford Tap

The Seckford Tap

We meet in a back room in Woodbridge,
fallen through a flume of history,
unknowingly ended here again.
Fingers clutching black russian,
blushing at a dull conversation
I have no place in, my eyes
baubles on your tongue, strung
about the roof of your shoulders, catching,
older than I remember, folding
in on themselves as if shelved more reading
than I've had in me.
Simply Red plays on the jukebox,
a fluke of mass proportion
as I pass myself back to playing
pool in your old watering hole,
passing out in front of the TV,
pattering at midnight desperate to pee,
losing it over the idea you might hear.
And we're stood here in this dank congregation, they've
grown their hair, they're
droning on big balls about which falls short another one.
I imagine watching the Sun hinge up wallside
reflected on the dullness in your eyes
that once rolled as baubles on my tongue.
I hum Simply Red,
imagine the things we may have said or shared
before the affair went stale and I moved on.
The feeling prolongs as if an off beat metronome.
There's a home in you,
where a restless version,
as a short nasturtium built to inflict pain,
heals sane and well rested on the sofa.
You pinch a cigarette, the rest did
find a place on an old pub pew
and I looked at you, with the same
wide eyed, long soaked saliva love-dust
somehow rusted, unchecked with age,
turned meek and beige in the lull of us.
I wonder what the fuss was then, riddling your body
as an unplucked hen to the naive and hungry,
too in a hurry to be cherished.
When it was dished we didn't want it,
that's the truth, ain't it?
That's the truth.