After Bukowski
You know,
that’s when I need it
When I’m in the rose garden
after a funeral
and they say ah, the Tequila Sunrise
and all I’m thinking of
is you leaning on the wood
behind the oak bar in the living room
hands slick with Grenadine
laughing over the twisted neck
of the Galliano bottle
making Wallbanger’s, sunrises, stingers, Negroni’s, ‘hoppers,
spritzers,
getting juiced on pinky Mateus, Dubonnet, Campari
sending me out for ice, tongs a-jangling in the ice bucket
‘Pen, pop in parasols for the ladies’
plop in an olive, a maraschino cherry, a lemony twist
clinking glasses, reflecting the pastel tones of
evening dresses with rows of cloth covered buttons
the size and colour of chickpeas
while Uncle Ronnie plays darts badly
leaving pock marks in the wall
and falling off the bar stool
when you flick him with the wet bar towel.
In the Jack Daniels mirror,
their reflections are not kind;
as any poet knows but especially the Barfly himself
whose poetry I will not discover
for another ten years
when I get sent a copy as a half-arsed apology
after an embarrassing scene at the flicks
with you when you were still Dad and a few too many
Hartsman lagers in a plastic bag
and too many mouthfuls of dewy apricots
whose combined fermentation
explodes
and
is not contained
by your jeans
escaping looks in the darkness
as you exit the plush rows
to isolate in the loo cubicle
mopping pointlessly
while I watch the film
solo.
Charlie would get it;
that you can miss
that which you did not love -
the sound of family
arguments
and put-downs, slurred vitriol, scuffles
after which, drinking,
drinking, dancing
and smooching and eye-rolling looks
while I sit on our red velvet sofa
watching TV
in my knee-length patterned socks
with a book.
Drinks were lurid, exotic,
the colour of fun,
tantalising, desirable, lined up in rows,
reflecting dilute shades of vermilion,
sherbet lemon, neon blue,
like adult versions of the
jam-jars for painting at school,
before the stained glasses became
familiar, painful, tasteless
evocative reminders of you
at every event after
and especially
after
you ask me to switch
you off
and after
you are gone
but the drinks are still here.
“Have a cocktail, Penny-love,
A fancy mixer?”
Just the thing.
Tequila Sunrise
is an orangey red-stained garden rose
growing after someone else’s funeral
with trays of pyramid sandwiches
and twiglets and chitchat,
and pastel colours in the faded garden
and the best dresses
and the clinking glasses
and they are
no fun at all.
There's no fun in funeral -
despite the jokes in the car,
despite clasping hands,
and lips pressed to damp cheeks.
Our stab at history
is here upon us
now
and in the moment –
in the wine on the tongue
breath fogging the air
your words in my ear
his tongue (and more) in me
and I guess, in the end,
fucking
Bukowski
wouldn’t have it otherwise.
Reflections, after reading about Matjames Metson while in the garden at a wake https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-51375721
