Sadie
A daft piece I found lurking in my redundant file and gave a swift brush up. This doggerel needs, and is getting, constant editing 🙂
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Sadie perched on the arm of the sofa
Wearing an off-white winceyette nightie
With Walter, her silent partner beside her
To watch Gardeners’ World on daytime TV –
She had a crush on Monty Don,
Always watched when he was on,
And rolled a cig from ashtray butts.
Her hair was frantic.
Elemental. Electric. Chaotic.
Crimson and metallic blue
An abstract expressionist fright site
With yellowish streaks
Marking the borderline
Between grey and greyer yet.
She lit the cigarette
Triggering a coughing fit
Mocking the angelic apparition
Of her mirrored reflection
Smoke wreathed the head
Of the ageing, fading, former
Girl-child, daughter of the universe
Her countenance shone
With an aetherical glow –
She might have modelled the Starbucks logo.
Walter, Sadie’s long-term live-in partner,
Former honcho of the local menagerie
Sat ramrod straight, unmoving,
Eyes fixed on a screen that he could not see.
Piles of Evening Times and Sunday Mails
That Sadie could not afford to cancel,
Reached past his chin,
Almost, but not quite, burying him.
Walter was welded to the vinyl sofa
Slowly dissolving,
His particles mingling
With Sadie’s deceased Chihuahua
Conchita’s.
Contravening menagerie policy
Walter fetched pails of big-cat faeces,
He stored in barrels on the balcony,
Affording the tenement a rural air,
For mulching the roses he planned to plant
In the garden of the ground-floor apartment
That Sadie set her heart on renting
As soon as Strathclyde Council relented.
Or to pour over the bowler hats
Of Orange Paraders
On the twelfth of July
Whichever came sooner.
Sadie picked a Ferrero Rocher
From a silver bon-bon tray
And tongued off the chocolate
To add to the sucked nuts
On a saucer for later.
She popped her palate in
And stuffed her mouth
With a whole hazelnut handful
At the very moment Monty sprung
From behind a clump of floribunda.
Suddenly Sadie could not breathe
And could not swallow
She had no idea of the Heimlich Manoeuvre
She coughed and barked as best she could
But there was no dislodging the hazelnut blockage.
While Monty Don broadcast the value of mulching,
“A thick blanket of manure makes for nutritious conditioning.”
Sadie gasped her last
And slid down the sofa
Slowly dissolving,
Her elements mingling,
With Conchita,
Her beloved Chihuahua…
…. And Walter.
© coolhermit 2023
Views: 1684
Thoroughly enjoyed the normality mixed with the darker side, which you somehow made normal too. Very clever, I was quite sorry when I got to the end. 🙂 Sue.
Thanks, Sue, I was looking for a ‘lost’ poem in my docs – when I came across a rough out of this one – and thought I’d work it a bit – I did not expect to have to edit it as much as I have – hopefully it will make a good performance piece 🙂
I think it is based on a real story from Germany maybe but it was some years ago and I have no idea really.