For your C&C:
(If the formatting works the indented lines are to be read as beginning just 
below the end of the preceding lines and, once again, the word between *'s 
is supposed to in italics)


What Verity Says In The Cold Light Of Day

If you write about this don’t mention me
or what I said on the bus when we saw those women
who made their roll-ups then lit them - NO
SMOKING is a challenge to some - and there’s no smoke
without me.
            And don’t reveal, please don’t say,
I was talking about me, the truth, as we watched
the ways I’m on the breath, how I drift in the air
mingling with laughter, their last pints, and truth -
*doh,* I’ve said that embarrassing word again, a word
that pays no heed to scientists, or barristers,
or bishops when their limousine doors close –
is more like a ripe mango.
                           No joke, it’s true. I’m squidgy,
the most ungentle of fruits, a real handful,
you get under my skin and I’m wet, I dribble,
and you suck not caring what others may see
until the hard white stone is all you hold,
and if I’m lucky that may get planted in the earth
by some wet-fingered solemn-faced child
who’ll soon forget.
                    No, don’t let on I’ve said all this,
say instead that just as beer ferments to its taste
and tobacco leaves smoulder, and mangoes over-ripen,
and I’m as anonymous as any whispering angel or demon,
I asked to borrow your clothes, so I can return
to where I belong unnoticed. I daren’t leave here naked.




Bob Cooper

PS It may be worth saying that the "Doh" sound is something I saw on a 
Tee-Shirt in a speech bubble above Homer Simpson who had wide eyes and an 
open mouth as he was  clasping his forehead. So, as far as I'm concerned 
(and a dictionary or two, I guess) it's now a word!





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