Thursday 15th January
I wrote this (along with many others even worse) in the immediate aftermath of losing Alison. It was a brief but passionate affair and she broke my heart by doing a Shirley Valentine on me on the Island of Crete. Ancient History now, but it broke my heart at the time…
Never Trust An Artist
(Preamble….)
All the poems I’ve written, the necks I have bitten – didn’t make a winner of me
The cheekbones I’ve grazed, the names I’ve erased make these gun-lips unworthy of me
(The story so far…)
Did I dream you standing there, drift my fingers through your hair
Smell the dampness on your skin, discover what went on within
Or was it only make-believe, weaving only to deceive
A spinning gamblers card I played in the ego game of time-waylaid
I thought I was so clever too, to have won a pretty girl like you
I turned your head right from the start; I really thought I’d won your heart
I should have outgrown all of that, but older time begets not wise
Though I was sure I was where it’s at – you really brought me down to size
And me the Hero, the Artist too, the Liberated Feminist Socialist who
Had read all the right books; who knew how to please, was wicked shin-kicked and brought to my knees
You stood there above me, sunlight in your hair; I could almost forgive you standing there
But you smiled as you twisted your high-heeled shoe in the space in my heart I’d opened for you
This pretty girl I thought I’d won, the face for all my stories spun
Had spun me through her fingers feel, and wound me round her spinning wheel
I who wove people into my life, and out again, quick as a knife
Got caught in the shuttle and before I knew,was part of the pattern I’d woven for you
(What can we say…)
Never trust an artist, with his magic box of oils
Never fence with a foxy lady, a fencer with unbuttoned foils
Never trust an artist, a weatherman of words
Never leave your heart in your lovers hands – she’ll feed it to the birds