a short - very short - story about a boy, his mum and some bus tickets

Tickets

I was delighted to be asked to make a recording of this poem by the author, by Pleasant Street.  You can find more of her poetry  here 
https://geletilari.wordpress.com/ 

and more of mine here  
http://chrisbaldwinpoems.blogspot.co.uk/

A Nice Change

Upstairs
in Herne Bay,
in the smaller room,
I press down upon you
on your single bed.

You are supple under my weight
as we face our virginities –
spreading ourselves
like a picnic
on your mother’s wrinkled counterpane.

The tide has been quietly climbing this grey beach,
the sun a pale lily.

I taste the opening of your lips
then I slip
into you.

While others move around the house
in their own lives –
cooking, farting –
we are pinned 
in this scrapbook moment
together.

You lift your head
and press your lips to my chin.
For a dark red moment
they cling.

You relax.

I study the pillow beneath your head –
the weaving of thread,
the grain of your hair against the linen.

There is trembling,
tight-fisted,
white-knuckled trembling
in my supporting arms,
as purple bass notes rise,
slow and sustained,
from the room beneath.

Coal smoke
from a hundred
November seaside chimneys
rides slyly to the clouds.

We lie here
holding our bellies apart,
tense as frost
in the afternoon.

We have not crossed
a line
we pretend.

We have.


When,
through this muscle-bound silence,
and in my breathlessness,
I am spent,
I sag away from you
and there,
crouched on the end of me,
is a berry
of golden blood.

The music stops.

We flee
into our excited fear
like five year olds
at pass the parcel.

My adam’s apple gates my throat
frozen by a single touch.
Have I scotched the dirty heart of you?

Outside the washing
freezes on the line.

Downstairs 
Steve eats sausage
with ketchup
and
Jackie plays
Lou Reed
on her stereo –

again.


Perfect Day

What I Want To Say To You

I wrote this for my daughters when they were little.
The Clock in the picture is in Newton Abbot and was always used as a height reference by my Dad who grew up there.  "Ohh!" he'd say, "that's twice the height of Newton Clock Tower!"

Christopher Baldwin 7