Poems | John D Robinson

 Artwork : Nandalal Bose
Source : Juliet Reynolds

Friday & Saturday

Margot is 79 years old and she’s
uninhibited and is having sex
with the local low-life and
perverts and they’re robbing
her blind;
Helen is 61 and she’s
drinking too much and next
week she’s going to be
street-homeless and she will
die soon;
Kate is 53 and off the streets
for tonight and in a safe
place;

we visited the city, we were
relaxed together and smoked
beneath a canvas shelter as
the rain raced down;
Denise lives in a
derelict building, no water,
no electric, she is 80;
James is 3 and he will never
see his parents again and he
will never know why and
no one else has an answer;
a tsunami hit New Zealand,
I read some more of
‘Farrago Soup’ by
Doug Draime;
we watched a film together;
I drank some wine and
wrote some poems
appreciating the fact that I’m
a lucky son of a bitch
and then I went to bed.



On a Daily Basis

She put her 14 month old baby
girl into the bathtub and then
returned to the kitchen to
carry on drinking cider and
smoking joints;
2 or 3 hours later,
remembering,
she found her baby drowned,
dead;
she was sentenced to 7 years,
she expressed great remorse,
revealed herself openly,
it had been an awful day and
she’d drank cider and smoked
some joints of hash
which was, she said,
‘Something she did on a daily
basis with never a problem’



Rock 'n Roll Breakfast

Today at Ed’s diner
we breakfasted on
Presley
Cash
Fats
courtesy of a table-
top silver-coin-
swallowing juke-box;
I sang along and you
smiled, we smiled at
one another and then
you sang along,
later somebody
selected Berrys’
‘Johhny Be Goode,’
Holly’s ‘Peggy Sue’;
 we filled our mouths
with eggs and hash-
browns
and mushrooms and
sausages and
fried tomatoes and
sipped at our coffee
as Little Richard
Bill Hailey
Ed Cochran
and
Jerry Lee-Lewis
filled our ears
at 8a.m.



The Onlookers

Roy had boasted that he was
meeting the very popular
Jessica and that she was
going to give him a blow-job;
‘Bollocks’ we said ‘That’s
bullshit’
‘Okay’ he said ‘Come and
see it for yourselves’
and 6 or 7 of us 15 and 16
year old non-believing
friends of his accepted
his invite;
‘Just don’t fuck about,
keep quiet and out of
sight, okay?’ he said
seriously; we all nodded
our heads;
Jessica was an unfortunate
skinny looking soul with a
big nose and clumsily
over applied make-up;
her best feature
was her lovely brown
hair which fell beyond
her ass;
and the gang of us were
looking down from atop a
grassy bank and we looked
as she went to work
and Roy looked up
grinning and giving us the
thumbs up
and we began laughing and
and applauding
and she moved away,
coughing and spluttering
and looked up at us and
she began to cry and
ran away sobbing loudly;
Roy zipped up and
shouted that we were a
‘Bunch of lousy fucks’
our laughter and
applause increased,
smothering any pity
we may have had for
the poor girl.


The Bully

The bastard thrust his face
an inch from mine
and literally spat
‘The best part of you
Robinson dripped down
the legs of your
whore-mother’
there was only one
come-back I had;
‘Yes Corporal’
he stepped back
trying to suppress a
grin but failed and
then moved in real
close and whispered
‘You keep the fuck
outa my way Robinson’
I nodded my head,
he turned and walked
away;
I was just 16 years old,
several weeks into a
military career
and this asshole was 10
years senior and a 5 year
veteran infantryman;
he was a cunt and his
name was Ferguson.