My dad asleep in his chair
His eyes closed like pressed flowers
A great big man
Having a great little sleep

“Good morning, lovely weather,” he said
Leaning over the counter and
Unfilling a bucket of goodwill over my head
“I’d like a girlfriend,” I replied
“A friendly, pretty one
And preferably one not delivered from a bucket.”
“Picky, picky, aren’t we? Unbucketed girls don’t come cheap.”

He showed me his stock
I showed him the cash
I pointed to the one with the tiara and sash
Which was a mistake because she turned out to be Miss Worlds Apart
As, when I looked more closely, did all the others
Strange to see them together like that.
Then to make matters worse
The man in the shop turned out to be Mister Parallel Universe:
As soon as he had my money he disappeared.

And she didn’t even come with a free bucket.

It couldn’t last
She kept herself at a distance
Then blamed me for shouting
We never went out together
We slept in separate beds
Took separate holidays
I bought us a tandem
She bought a unicycle
I bought two tickets for the Superbowl
She bought a barge pole
“This isn’t what I was promised at the shop,” I said
But I could produce no bucket as proof of purchase.

She must have slipped out her bedroom window one night
I found a ladder propped there in the morning
A ladder, two lines that never meet.
It had to be him and sure enough
Up from the garden drifted the smell of what could only have been buckets.
And no letter of explanation from Miss Worlds Apart.

One Winter’s evening
Hurrying home from work,
The North wind whistled at her
And she a married woman!

She slowed
She glanced about
She slowed some more
She stopped.

She turned down her collar
And took the scarf from her neck
She closed her eyes
And allowed the wind to blow its wicked way with her

Bold as you like the ***** homeward rushes
But walking through the door
She cannot hide her blushes.

How little I seem to have done today
How little there is to show
How busy I’ve been
It’s so terribly clean
Now I’ve tidied it all away

I think he’d be pleased
He was house-proud you see
There isn’t a speck of dust in it
And nor anymore
Is there gore on the floor
There’s a visitor due any minute

He’d have been mortifided
If I hadn’t tidied
Poor Mr McGinley
I sliced him quite thinly
He took it quite calmly
And was only alarmed
When his blood hit the ceiling
And started congealing before he could reach for a cloth
I was going to roll the bits up in the carpet
But he said it would ruin it
So I posted him piecemeal down the waste-disposal unit
I heard his teeth grinding
Did I need reminding that filth was bad for his health
And did I think the sink would clean itself
“That’s typical of you
And us with visitors due.”

Now the cutlery’s washed
I polished the cosh
I wiped down the walls
It looks terribly posh
So there’s nothing to show how busy I’ve been
He was always so eager to leave the house clean

As leave it he has
Run off with the neighbour and taken the cash
Or so I told the police when I asked them to call
I think that’s Plod now
Why doesn’t he knock?
I bend down and peer through the hole in the lock
Oh no! He’s lifted the lid on the drain

Up through the grating like toast
Pops the ghost of my dissected next-of-kin!
And though -thus far- he’s taken it calmly
The voice of my salamied sweetheart
Is bending the ear of the boy on the beat
“Don’t you dare forget to wipe your feet!”

Plod peers through the key-hole and we see eye to eye
He winks and says goodbye.

It was the incense perfumed aftershave that first aroused her
suspicions
Though there were other clues:
The purple balaclava
And the fish tattoo
The funny collar on the bedroom floor
Sunglasses indoors
The little round wig he always wore

“I think you have a secret life,”
She murmured to her lover.
As, under cover of darkness,
Father Doyle
Traced a crucifix in baby oil across her thighs
And gave her a blessing in disguise

She was so much younger than he
And here they were, alone,
She all flesh and blood,
He all skin and bone.
All bristles, knees and hips
Skin as tight as vicar’s lips,
A slight smell of cheese,
They’d warned her there’d be nights like these.
She stood there with a duty to perform.
She stood there in her nurse’s uniform.

The old man was quite dead.
She drew the curtains round his bed.
Began to wipe the grime away,
As mothers will do every day,
She washed his ***** knees,
They’d warned her there’d be nights like these.
She scrubbed behind his ears
And stroked his head.
She combed his hair
And tucked him up in bed.
She thought about a goodnight kiss,
But no, not on nights like this.

If dead men dream then this was his:
He took that goodnight kiss
And dreamt of the wife he’d won,
Who’d touched him as the nurse had done.
He dreamt of days of bliss
Of when he never dreamt that there’d be nights like this.

I know where the time goes,
As go it must,
It goes like the wind,
Which explains all the dust.

I do know where the time goes,
I heard it talking to the trees
When I was three
So I asked my dad,
“What did it say?”
And he laughed and said,
“I’m here to stay.”
Then he found a twig  
And scratched that lie into the ground with it.
Which suited me down to it.

We avoided cremation.
It would have seemed that time itself had set dad’s *** on fire
As though belatedly berating him
For making his non-carking remark
In the park
Thus consigning him and his joke
To a message in a bottle of bloke.

Now I’m back in the park
And hoping time has been kind enough
To preserve the evidence.
Hmm, I thought as much;
It’s blown all the leaves into a heap
Like secrets the trees couldn’t be trusted to keep.
It’s broken the twigs’ fingers
For their part in the scam
And I’m afraid to say
That all the rain today
Has turned the dust, like dad, to clay.
Which has itself been washed to the same place time goes
Which is either, rather beautifully… away.
Or, less so…down the drain.
Depending on how fantastic your dad was.