Three Poems by Cliff Wedgbury

 

breakdown

she gave me her tights

when the fan-belt snapped

 

lost in the country

just south of the map

 

her parents were angry

when we got home

 

how could we tell them?

they had no phone

 

the landscape was ours

such beautiful sights

 

repairing the mini

with her nylon tights

teenage lover

crimson lipstick and black mascara

your hair as stiff as a scouring pad

 

we lay together on the sofa

mum gone out and brother bribed

 

love songs

from the gramophone

 

a couple of hours

on our own

 

the taste of martini

from your sweet wet mouth

 

our laughter in an

echoing house

 

how hard to be

a teenage lover

 

living at home

with father and mother

vest

 

you went to the party

in your grandad’s string vest

 

pulled a bass guitarist

with a tattoo on his chest

 

how jealous you made

the other office girls

 

wasting wages

on their king’s road curls

 

you were much more beautiful

than all the rest

 

dancing to reggae

in that old string vest

 

Cliff Wedgbury is a Cork based poet, born in London in 1946. His formative years were spent in the folk clubs, jazz clubs and second-hand bookshops of the Charing Cross Road area in London. His last collection “A Lingering Adolescence,” was published by “Belfast/Lapwing.”