Seven Hours and Fifteen Days (R)

[dedalus]

The pizza cartons on the table look back at me

as do the empty tinnies, the ash on the floor,

and the cat is yowling for a pee, even the bloody

goldfish look dyspeptic, and I think, holy fuckin

Christ, where did things go wrong? I made a crack

at the funeral when her old man died, said Heaven

will be on their toes now, audit and inventory on the way,

they’ll be having Saint Michael up for embezzlement!

He was a dour little cheerless cunt, a City accountant,

with no time in the world for me. The wife being dead

doesn’t his jewel and treasure his only daughter run away mad

with a gay blade and criminal and wild rapparee, aka Me.

Well, you could sympathise with his point of view.

 

The rain. The rain is fuckin fallin

all over Ireland, all over the UK,

with double amounts in Wales

to teach those Celtic traitors a lesson,

to drive them back into their gloomy chapels:

get in, ye dogs, oh hello Cabinet Minister!

Stay put until the Saxons whistle.

 

The fuckin bitch. I mean, really!

How was I to know she’d come home early

when I was having it off with the meter reader?

They should never allow women in these jobs.

It was a concatenation of circumstances.

Yes, that’s exactly what it was. It was the alignment

of Jupiter and Venus, for haven’t we been told

time and again how the old gods misbehaved?

We are living under sniffy new gods now

who smell your socks and delve into the rubbish

and carry around walkie-talkies. Bleep …ggggh … bleep

almost like American immigration officials.

 

Whads the porpoise of yur visit?

I beg your pardon?

Slightly better than the bloke in the turban

smelling your passport at Heathrow.

She went off to her Auntie Meredith, I think,

a right fuckin head case if ever there was one,

who went to Girton, espousing free love with a megaphone

and never getting fucked, not once, until a randy

taxi driver had her on the back seat and still charged the fare.

She’s tight-lipped and bitter. No better place.

 

I can just see the two of them, scratching the eyes from

old photographs, sobbing, cackling, slurping Lapsang Soochong,

sticking pins into cloth dolls looking a lot like me.

Women are a caution when they find their own company.

I think men exist to afford some relief from the possibility

of women having to talk to other women for a long time.

I know we’ve got balls and things, and we are inordinately proud

of our male appendages but have you ever noticed that

women don’t seem to care, it’s only guys who compare?

 

She’ll come back. I bloody well hope she’ll come back!

She’ll treat me like shit for a month. Been there, done that.

She’ll cook and bang down plates on the table, a woman’s duty,

but she will not do my laundry. Wash your own fuckin underwear!

This is what they do. I’m sorry about the meter reader.

I was negotiating a discount, dear, the bills are shocking!

We have to consider … a plate goes whizzing past my head

and consideration returns to the here and now. You know

I love you? I do. This is entirely true. You are my woman.

You are my particular woman. I love them all in general.

[tonyv]

Tough break, Brendan, but things will settle down in time. The speaker knows this. How? Because it has happened before.

 

Very well written, from a distinctly masculine point of view. I love the second verse:

 

The rain. The rain is fuckin fallin

all over Ireland, all over the UK,

with double amounts in Wales

to teach those Celtic traitors a lesson,

to drive them back into their gloomy chapels:

get in, ye dogs, oh hello Cabinet Minister!

Stay put until the Saxons whistle.

 

It really shows the speaker's mood and sets it for the reader, too, together with the title and its allusion.

 

Tony