TOMMY THUMB'S ADVENTURES

TOMMY THUMB’S ADVENTURES

Advent: the festive fire
flash-reflected here and there.
Everywhere tangled tinsel
pings a sparkle red, green, gold:
All along the line of sweet liqueurs
skates this limelight line … up
and around the rim
of the half empty liqueur glass
to twinkle-polish the blue green carapace
of the gleaming iridescent fly
trapped wing-warped
in sweet Midori

Advent: your hand,
first seen with floating fingers
delicately, eloquently poised
extended in your dancer's pose,
now tense, tied, palm up,
fingers coiled in a tight wound fist:
Balled, bruised blood-red, the fingers
curl sprung to strike.

Advent: something comes
something to tear and tarnish  

The finger-tips twitch. I tense.

Finger flick, slice …

Tommy Thumb, Tommy Thumb, where are you?
Here I am, here I am … How do you do?
 
Not him!
O dear blessed God
Not him!
one blade-finger out;
Him?
Yes, him
a fatuous friend who hung on every word I said,
a fawning sycophant,
a fool. Yes, him.

Flick, slice;
a second finger leaves the bunch.

Peter Pointer, Peter Pointer, where are you? …

And him?
There’s more than one, O Jesus God
and that one too?
the man's a preening posturing clown,
a monstrous mountebank,
a quack.

Flick, slice …

Timmy Tall, Timmy Tall, where are you? …
 
Him too!
Can't you see you're killing me?
You with him?
He's got no style, no joie-de vivre,
no zest, no energy
no life.

Flick, slice…

Ruby Ring, Ruby Ring, where are you? …
 
Another?
there's really another?
Why choose him?
He doesn't know what day of the week it is:
He's bone-idle, boring, and brain-dead
just a blank.

Flick, slice …

Baby Small, Baby Small, where are you? …
 
Don't tell me more.

The last?
Oh that's OK then, is it,
because I don't know the man?
I'm so relieved, I truly am
You met him where?
I damn well drove you there
and drove you home again.

I reach across your open palm
and lean the discarded cocktail stick
[you ate the bloody cherry, didn’t you!]
to let the struggling fly escape
his melon-trap.
 
I curl your fingers for you,
wrap them tight up in a ball
I've news for you, sweet Judas;
He's not the last
I am.

Advent: something came, something went.

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Betrayal and adultery is always difficult to take. When you learn of multiple adulteries ticked off finger by finger like a kindergarten rhyme, it is devastating. Why will people never realise that unrequested confession is primarily self-indulgent? It's not honesty it's sheer cruelty.