All or nothing at all
her father had said
and it seemed right

until she met Harpoon
and he seemed her
Mr Right the one she

had been waiting for
the one she’d dreamed
about but then it all

went wrong and he
became Mr Wrong
and oh yes that was

the downfall that was
the way to her deep
depression and that

episode in the bath
when she tried to
drown herself as her

mother had before her
and she discovered her
as a child coming home

from school and the
door was ajar and when
she went in there was

her mother with her
wrists slit and blood
and her mother drowned

and dead and now sitting
there in her mother’s
chair her father some

place her husband poking
some other and all or
nothing at all seemed all

there was left apart from
the few books on the shelf
the Bill Burroughs her mother

had read and left and that
Bukowski book she’d found
in some second shop and the

battered Bible which her
father had beat her about
the head and backside with

as a child when her father
had been boozing or she
had been sinful or wild.