I passed Enid's father
on the stairs
of the flats
gave him an icy glare

he was ******
so didn't care
he went down
and I went up

he was whistling
some song
I knew he was a prat
but what was wrong?

later that day
I met Enid
in the greengrocer shop
in Meadow Row

getting potatoes
and greens
for my mother
not to forget carrots

which I almost did
she came in the shop
in her faded red dress
her hair in a mess

red marks on her arm
one eye closing
as if half dozing
what did you want

young girlie?
the greengrocer
asked her
she gave him a list

and he sorted it out
I carried my bag
to the door
I saw your old man earlier

I said
gave him an icy glare
she looked at me
then at the carrots

orange and raw
then at the door
didn’t say anything
did you?

she asked
no I kept shtum
would have done
if I didn't think

he'd take it out
on you
I said
is this 3 pounds

of spuds?
the greengrocer asked
can't make out
the figure writ

she gazed
at the piece of paper
and said
yes 3 I think

and off he went
shoulders stooping
head bent
what happened

this time?
I asked
what did he do?
he said I slept in

too late or spoke
out of turn
Enid replied
belted me

thumped me
then I cried
the greengrocer
filled the small bag

she held
in her small hands
and took her coins
and gave her change

deep inside
a child wept
near to me
but out of range.

This is one of Barry Hodges' most inspired memories.

  'Twas morning time in times of yore and I, bold Barry Hodges, stood outside my store, my giant vegetables on display for all to see, when lo and behold! a luxurious limousine drew up, and from the back there emerged a gorgeous form of voluptuous statuesque feminity.
  "My God!" I cried, it is that beauteous lady from *La Dolce Vita, the wondrous Anita - and I gazed with joyous on her divine body, imagining it sprawled lasciviously in my bed, legs open as wide as a major road junction on the M1 motorway.
  "Excuse me", said she in that Italo-Swedish voice guaranteed to make any man wet himself copiously, "But I am a-lookink for a shop a-called 6B, and yet all I can-a-see is a Barry Hodges' the Master Geengrocer's, complete with a giant cucumber or two, which I 'av to say remind me of somet'ing tasty."
"Dearest lady, said I, you have come to the right place: 6B is the trading name of my sister enterprise: Barry Bodgers' Boil Bursting Beauty Bureau which is located upstairs, Barry Bodgers at your service, my dearest, most delightful Fru Ekberg."
"Shhhhhhhhh! I am een deesguise, not even dear Federico knows I am-a-here." And thus, assuring her of my utmost discretion, and forming a bond by saying that I too, the famous Geordie seducer, Barry Hodges, had indulged in a slight nomenclatural change in order to separate the two sides of my business interests, and in order to do a spot of money laundering on the side.  "But," I enquired, "How is it that you have need of the rather specialised medical services we offer, you who are so radiant and bella-bella?" She lowered her eyes seductively and promised to reveal her terrible secret.

As I ushered her up the stairs to the studio, my eyes on her ****-cheeks wiggling like two delectable beach ***** in a sack, she told me the sad tale of the immense boil which kept recurring on the middle of her back and which no amount of corrective surgery could fix.
"Aha!" I exclaimed, "Only Barry Bodgers, the world's greatest boil-sucker, can effect the cure for which you long, and I shall operate on you personally, not entrusting such a task to even the best of my boil-bursting minions." I added to myself, "Also I want to give you a good old bonking while we're at at."

Once we attained the privacy of my consulting room, I instructed her to strip off utterly so I might examine her, and I can tell you, dear reader, that her **** **** was a joy to behold. I too divested myself of my clobber, knowing that boil-******* can get a bit messy at the best of times. Jesus wept!, but the mighty boil betwixt her graceful shoulders revealed when de-plastered was a true horror, with a yellow tip as big as a Grade One Belgian Turnip. I explained that I would **** it out whilst I rogered her from the rear and that, when she felt her ****** on the way, she should scream out to that effect and I would then bite the core of the boil right out in a blaze of mutual ******* glory, before applying a dose of my exclusive Boil Preventative Cream, namely a handful of our conjoined love-juices extracted from her gaping ***** by hand a few seconds earlier.
"Yes! Yes! Yes!" screamed the Swedish bombshell and with a mighty **** like an industrial Dyson FX334 on full power, I slurped and  razor-bit the boil, bursting it asunder, smothering my eager face in blood and putrid pus, thereby causing me to blow my *** as ne'er before. The green core of the boil emerged from its fleshly cavity with a deafening plop as we came together like a nuclear blast d'amour.

O, but only then, as my seminal outpourings soaked my jim-jams, did I awaken to discover yet another nocturnal emission. And, not unexpectedly, dear Nurse Nellie, having heard my cry of ecstasy, rushed in to my bedroom, head-shaking and tut-tutting as usual, as she knelt down and licked my tum-tum dry.
"Yum, yum" she murmured in her dulcet Northumbrian tones, "Ah've looked after three generation o' Hodges laddies, and I kin tell ye, your *****'s the tastiest of them all, ye bonnie wee man."
"Better than Grandad Charlie's?"
"Why aye, mon, yours is well creamier."

My greengrocer choked on a peanut
So I had to go to the farm
I asked for some rice
A packet of spice
And half a butternut squash.
He said sorry son,
I haven’t got none
The greengrocer sells them for me

It was the early days of the organic food craze
and my wife, ever a slave to the latest fads
(which disposition sometimes benefitted me pleasurably
but mostly cost me dearly)
made me run on an errand
(like: “Fido – go, fetch!”)
to get some organic vegetables
and arriving, I blurted out to the produce guy, stumbling:
“Some ****** for my wife” –
and that wise guy, Oxford-educated as he was
(though a failed Professor, so ended up at the greengrocer’s)
he said: “That you must induce or encourage in your wife, Sir;
I cannot and will not be of service in that connection.”

And I slowed down and I said:
“Well, dear fellow – for my wife, have you any organic vegetables?”
And Oxford-educated as he was, he did not understand such fads
having mostly a sedate and Classical demeanour
and he pointed his most English nose to the air;
and so I attempted again to sensible-phrase my inquiry:
“Are your vegetables -
and this I ask on account of my esteemed wife -
sprayed with poisonous chemicals?”
And the Oxford guy apprehended now, and he pronounced:
“Poisonous chemicals for your spouse
you must procure yourself, Sir”

Now, that was an idea. I knew Oxford-educated guys
were smart in some way or other.

And since then I have been free of my wife.

I have no need to run on errands for no baby, no more;
though I do have to count bars,
limited as my numerical skills are,
as is my verbal proficiency.

And the Oxford guy, meanwhile, I have it from the grapevine,
has set up an ******* Food Chain Store, worldwide;
I knew he’d go places, sooner or later, far and global

i find it strange to be politically correct,
without actually exercising any political
career-motive as a member of a government...
because that's what's we're being sold:
to be politically correct, without a career in
politics. doubly strange, to foster non-antagonising
views on everyday matters,
to later realise that whoever we're antagonising
from an environmental bias (rather than
a personal bias) we will never share a dinner with...
so like our opinions mattering in the first place
was by-and-large, just a media hoax to
ensure we were all prescribed the safety of
walking the tight-rope... and never really
designating ourselves the freedom of the constitutional
rights - this leftist bias remains intact,
on the canvas of freedom of speech, however
that freedom allows us to see rural endeavours in talk,
the once appreciated freedom is becoming a polarised
freedom to name & shame... a media hammer or nail...
because it's only freedom when enough people
agree with "us", to allow a bicep expression of
being backed up like some Spartacus...
i mean, i don't agree with most expression,
but i wouldn't **** the hornet's nest with the media
frenzy to appear politically correct... when
so few of us actually have any political power....
being sold free speech, to be later curbed with
political correctness is a bit cancerous....
given that free speech is equated to the voting X
from the age of mass illiteracy...
i don't see how free speech became a vehicle for
acquiring constrained speech dynamic -
when did we forget the chastity of speaking the airy-fairy
things in life on the informal basis, and when did we
become so ****** friendless, estranged, outsiders
to everything that matters... and now, supposedly
between butcher and greengrocer, talking about
the weather in cocktail smocking and bow-tie?
free speech gave us the rights to not ask for political powers...
on whatever governmental tier...
prescribing us political correctness has given the everyday
John the delusion that he can process political power...
the once famous strive for speaking what the hell you want
but not wanting political power changed into
being prescribed political correctness but no political power...
so i ask you... what's the point of being politically
correct, if you gain no political power,
unless you're a rat, a snitch, spying on your neighbour
to grass them out? because that's what political correctness bred,
snitches... those given political correctness laws
were never given any other political power...
added to the fact that they wouldn't have said anything
interesting / provocative anyway.

Fay sat beside you
on the concrete stairs
of Banks House
looking out
into the Square

where young girls
played skip rope
or boys having toy guns
reenacted WW2
taking no prisoners

firing noisy cap guns
and Fay said
where shall we go?
where do you want to go?
you said

away from the noisy guns
and skip rope games
she replied
and so you both got up
and went out

into the Square
and down the *****
the morning sun
blessing your heads
she in her summery dress

of yellow and orange flowers
white socks and sandals
and you in your grey tee shirt
and jeans and battered
black shoes

and you walked up
Meadow Row
between the houses
on either side until you turned right
by the public house

and onto the bombsite
behind the greengrocer store
and there you both sat
on the remains of a wall
looking around the ruins

and wild flowers
growing between bricks
and broken concrete blocks
and Fay said
I wonder who lived here

when the bombs fell?
what did they feel?
you studied her fair hair
tied in a bow
her blue eyes

scanning the scene
the white and yellow flowers
the weedy green
scared I guess
you said

I would be
she said
my mum said
she hid under
the dining room table

with her niece
where she lived
when the bombs fell
and there was the sound
of bombs falling

and explosions
and bangs
and people calling
and children crying
you said

Fay put her arm
under yours
and squeezed it tight
and lay her head
on your shoulder

and she whispered
I’m glad we
weren’t here then
glad we were born
after the War

me too
you said
and she squeezed
your arm tightly
some more.

Fay met me
off the bus
after school

she looked pleased
to see me

her hair
was bunched up
in a ponytail

her school uniform
looked well worn

how was your day?
she asked

boring
I said
being educated
by the unwilling
to the uninterested
and Old Thompson
was as cruel as ever

we walked along
to the crossing
and crossed

how was your day?
I asked
how were the nuns?

it was about suffering today
she said
Sister Bede said
suffering was a gift
from God
it was our way
to suffer
for the souls
in Purgatory
so that they
may be freed

sounds kind of dark
I said

what do you mean?
she said

well that God
should give suffering
as a gift
so that it might
free others
from this Purgatory place

some of the saints
have been honoured
to have been chosen
to suffer
she said

we passed
the greengrocer shop
I looked in the window
the young guy
was serving
some old dame
with potatoes

I suffer from boils
on the *** sometimes
does that count?
I asked
does that get
some soul
out of Purgatory

she looked perplexed
I guess so
she said

ask the nuns tomorrow
if boils on the ****
count

she smiled
don't think I will
she said

we passed
the public house
the smell of beer
oozed out
from the open door

Daddy said
that these places
are the roosting places
of the ******

plenty of ****** then
on a Saturday night
I said
pretty packed
when I passed
on my way
to the cinema
last week

I guess
we should pray
for them
she said
Sister Bede said
our prayers
are worth more
than gold
do you pray?
she asked

only for the school
to fall down
or Thompson
to catch leprosy
I said

she frowned
that's not good
she said
we should pray
for good things
to happen

I liked her hair
and eyes
especially when
she gazed at me
as she spoke
her bright eyes
warming me
against the cold

ok
I said
I suppose
I could

we walked on
and across
Rockingham Street

I liked her
careful way
of walking
and her fine
small feet.

it’s like that the beatles v. stones
or the *** pistols v. the ramones question,
i know that hendrix was pure at 27
(joining the haloed crowd fronted by
the quasi back in black femme fatale),
but he was simply a virtuoso,
what i got was melody from kravitz:
the piano and the drums,
got me tapping, air pianist that i am
for the drums on my collar bone,
and it was all pristine blue one sunday afternoon,
i stopped dreaming, ushered into a pauper artist definition,
and felt more love than i could have wishbone’d,
or fortune cookie’d for that matter,
because i knew, there and then:
the world can end with someone crucified
forcing the atom bomb explosion on a postcard from 34 a.d.,
but only because there’s ******* and worship involved,
the last man to bend the knees of others readied himself for torture
admiring the pyramids hoping for a revival,
and he got it, the near extinction of ourselves,
tortured and crucified, instigator of celebrity culture,
the posing duck-faced messiah with hands spreading
and soaring across the entire diameter we call the equator.
you can surely end the world, listening
to the dirges of the egyptians with sympathy
about how a thousand miles of living love built a monument of death,
and then invert in the vortex of ***** love
love that’s tortured the additive of missing jealousy -
three thousand phalluses entered and one more -
but still the greengrocer felt no metal on the finger readied;
because who would be jealous of a *****’s love
when so many noble women debased themselves to *******
and false prophesying of men?
let’s end it with: lenny’s my love
stands shoulders above in height above any hendrix output,
it is above whatever lottery wish in tremor
of finger aching crossed could ever burn to with
a guitarist doing crescendos in a#, or toothing the horse’s mane;
‘cos kravitz is a lyricist and not a virtuoso -
as his piano signatures prove - genteel;
hendrix give me your best signature rhythmic rubric!
oh wait, you can’t, ‘cos so so much solo!

I was there
When the world woke up
And the sky turned
From deep purple
To Grey

I was there
When pigeons and seagulls
Circled overhead
Beating the air behind them

I was there
When two elderly gentlemen
Struggled up the hill
And a greengrocer
Opened up shop

I was there
When a steadfast father
Encouraged his three wrapped up youngsters
On the way to school

I was there
When the crescent moon
Appeared from nowhere
And disappeared behind the clouds

I was there
As the turquoise river
Rippled beside rows of sailing boats

I was there
As beauty arrived
Fresh and quiet
And green grasses stood still

I was there
I was there

We,
all of us,
stood out in the lot
of the greengrocer's.

We looked upon
the pending sunset as if
we,
ourselves,
were birds ready
to take wing
into that auburn horizon.  

We looked at the clouds
as they became
majestic brushstrokes
placed strategically
by a great unseen artist
whose name we all knew,
but was different for each of us.  

There were brilliant purples,
pinks,
and oranges
that our eyes
might have been seeing
for the first
or last time.

(None of us knew for sure.)  

The sun shone
through a great bank of cirrus
like the beginning of
some great onslaught
by a giant dragon
or
the first flash
of a nuclear holocaust.

None of us
would’ve minded
either scenario
for the beauty of it
and
our presence
therein.  

*
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018

there's nothing quite like being rudely woken
by a cat - that sort of shadow you wish you
had to steer off the incubus...
     only the ugliest of the norse founded
kiev...
      i wonder, as i manage to peck a spider
off the corner of my room, drink,
then eat it, and subsequently imitate
regurgitation, upon having eaten body,
and then finding the legs,
these twisting, coiling artefacts of some
sort of disembodiment...
  i really was planning to drink this whiskey
in the afternoon, then the rudeness of the cat
waking me,
              then the rage against the machine
and the idea of a buddhist,
and then the voice, that would never
amount to the said theatric of burn ******
burn...
         i can't compete being drunk and
it only being nearing 7 a.m.,
       i can only cite:
  paper boy took the day off.
                        and i lost count to
every counted sunday,
thinking it a monday;
and that's a half of a hey-yah! thong
    bridget huan jonson jerking off
the next nesting jose johnson,
calling him enrique joe.
                     or: amazon god king
conquistador it's sunrise you *******...
people have to "work",
yeah, they "work", they're
rhetoricians!
             they're the embodiment of
what's spectacular about
western society...
          high brow romancing of
      the averted moral spectrum,
like i really did begin to start ******* cockroaches...
and these women were my sunrise...
    keep the gangrenes,
the *******, the abbies...  
i love that term,
it's like reviving: greengrocer...
        like calling a pet donkey a
chihuahua and then for asking oral ***...
calling it a sloppy-jappy...
      as if it was aimed as sushi shooting
the raw argument.
hence the love of h'america...
no, i never admire or fashion
the idea of americans waking up
i the globalist part of new york,
that's gobalist, and the 24h oops...
oh wait, you didn't realise we were insomniac?!
fucl me... afternoon for them
is like pretending breakfast for the rest
of us...
        i think the dieticians call
it fibre, or something twice as hard to digest,
twice as hard to constipate out on,
and thrice the name of a wife.
i really love they didn't
catch up on the insult:
it's a bit like eating humus,
or catching the sunset.

Sweet the girl and tender her age,
She's too young for the fire's rage.
But, alas, the law still stands,
And punishment for her crime demands.

Little Oshichi, that greengrocer girl,
Her hands, restrain; and hair, unfurl.
She stands upright against the stake,
Weeping as she regrets her mistake.

She had fallen in love with a page,
While a fire had roared and raged.
As her house was burnt away,
Love, within her heart, gave way.

Entranced, enraptured, and captured with him,
Oshichi went forth on a fanciful whim.
Believing that it would bring them together,
She struck a flint and started a fire.

A clanging tocsin pierced the night,
"Me-gumi, hark! There's a fire to fight!"
A throng of ***** steeplejack boys
Rush to the scene with swaggering poise.

Oshichi now gazed in horror, aghast,
Watching as the fire spread fast–
Her dream of meeting her youthful lover
Set ablaze with burning desire.

Arrested, tried, and sentenced to suffer,
The judge, kind sir, tried his best to save her.
"Are you not 15?" he asked, worriedly.
"I'm 16, my lord," she answered meekly.

Bewildered and anxious, he asked yet again,
"Surely you're 15, young one, dear saint?"
She bowed her head and shed a tear.
"No... I'm 16," she answered with fear.

Cursing his fate, the judge had no choice.
He gave his sentence with a downcast voice:
"Yaoya Oshichi–what girl so tender–
Shall be burnt an arson offender."

Bound and burnt for want of love,
Oshichi lifts her gaze above.
Weeping as her smoke ascends,
She cries to heaven, its mercy lend.

At last, Oshichi succumbs to the fire,
Consumed by passion borne of desire.
Sweet the girl and bitter the flame,
As her lover cries out her name.

Looking for serenity

At the corner shop
They have sold out happiness
On sticks
Dreams too
They sell fresh bread
Moreover, plastic toys.
The greengrocer next door
Sell carrots, cabbage and leeks
However, no heart-shaped
Tomatoes.
Further down the road
A shop specialises in exotic cheese
and milk products
However, none of them sells Joy.