He passed on, the fifteenth of last month
just before the Wolf Moon hit it’s sell by date
stretching a sigh along the Madrid fault line unnoticed.
I’d have to check with my loyalty points
but I’m pretty certain by the bar-code recognition;
at the super-market it was. All the milk half sour
in the incandescent daze of the dairy aisles
a complication with the refrigeration unit,
the Manager said in a press release published
after verification from a higher authority
at Head-Office to ensure unbreastfed babies
wouldn’t be sueing the company, for compensation.
They’re smart,those little bastards,and getting smarter,
don’t stop issuing the plastic bags, he was heard to say
under breath re-cycled from the air-con units,
som nam bew list ically
I’m sixty three and a bit, it’s how I’d like
to be remembered, he said. He wore new shoes,
that was always a sign of progress,functionality, he said.
No need to say anymore, leaving a conversation
as a man leaves footwear in a closet
in a house he means to return to.
I was with him when he gave-up disgusted,
a fortunate event to be there in the milk aisle,
reminiscing on gold-tops
and staring at row by row of creme-fraiche
doing rarefied eastern meditation practices
by the skimmed milk, we absorbed each other’s
consciousness by the low fat yoghurt,and laughed.
Before the check-out we were happy as the cows
that come home in the advertisemeants.
There was a bright white light and neither of us
were quite sure if the flourescent refrigeration units,
pulsing away to keep the salt free butter hard,
were choking on it’s own cholesterol, but anyhow
it didn’t matter much,how could it.
The purity and clarity in those eyes,the bliss in goodbye,
there, in the moment as the sirloin stacked in the meat counter
ensured a connection with that other,
Helping you spend less,every day.
Peter Handley
Peter Handley was born in a small village next to what was Sherwood Forest in the first decade at the beginning of the end of the age of Aquarius. He has been variously described as an arty farty twat and an Indian Oscar award winning actor and writer. He is published in numerous literary journals, trained, amongst other places, at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and continues to tell stories and bullshit in all the right hostelries to promote positive growth all around the world and in his back garden. His first solo exhibition of works on paper is due out in a fancy gallery in Vienna late 2014.
