Wednesday 28 December 2016

Winter Time


Just squeezing into the last days of the year, is December's instalment. Fans of Tom Waits will probably know why I wrote this poem - or maybe they won't...but this is the song that set me off.

In ever darker times for people around the world, there are still some very bright spots, and the stars of this month's film are enough to put a smile on the gloomiest face. Take a bow, Dunbar's Christmas lights! Our festive brilliance is funded and organised by local traders and townsfolk - none of your tastefully coordinated themes for us. I'm never sure if I prefer the lights advertising the nuclear power station, or the butcher's lights which depict a chicken repeatedly having its head chopped off. 


Thanks for watching - the text is below...


Winter Time
Things are pretty lousy for this calendar girl,
blue eyes once bright now greying at the sides -
dragged down by tears both wept and those
held back with the bravest of her frowns.
The lips that used to pout and kiss, blow smoke
into the eyes of a hundred cross-eyed sailors,
have blurred and wandered somewhere else
and her lipstick doesn’t know where it should go.
Polished and rosy, plucked from the tree
her cheeks as firm as they were round,
till this blight crept in and swapped the apples
for plums that are only fit for jam.

The famous tits that got her lifts and
bags carried up three flights of stairs,
they grew too big for eyes to linger
And now their daily catch is crumbs.
Summer no longer bares her legs
and the point of skirts is lost in time.
The jeans they once called lucky, discarded
as the weight of loss has settled on her hips.