Rank PoisonA Poem by David Lewis PagetIt
started off with disturbing dreams, I
tossed and turned in the night, Waking
with half-remembered scenes But
nothing that felt quite right, My
wife got irritable by and by And
slept in another room, ‘You
wake me with all your thrashing about, I
need my sleep to bloom.’ We’d
only been married a month or so The
second time round for both, I
was divorced, but her husband died A
year after taking the oath, Our
eyes had met in a party gloom All
singles, looking for love, And
when we kissed in that darkened room It
was lightning, from above. It
was all too rushed, I can see that now, We
didn’t give us a chance, No
time to see if our friendship grew, We
led each other a dance, I
bought a ring in the seventh week We
married the following day, She
often said as the months wore on We
shouldn’t have done it that way. I
asked her about her husband once But
she snapped, shut up like a clam, She
said that he died of a heart attack But
he wasn’t much of a man. She
said she didn’t like talking, that It
brought back too many tears, But
some of the scenes I dreamt about Have
stayed with me now, for years. I
noticed she started watching me When
I sat collating my stamps, She
did it so surreptitiously, Then
I started with stomach cramps. I
said, ‘Melissa, I don’t feel well Are
you sure that the fish was fresh?’ She
said, ‘Well I ate the same fish too, Does
it look as if I’m distressed?’ My
wife was there in the dreams I had But
the man there wasn’t me, The
eyes I used had belonged to Brad And
I wondered, who was he? Melissa
glared at the man I was As
she poured the table wine, She
wasn’t the woman I’d married then, But
one from a former time. I
raised the glass and was going to drink When
he knocked it out of my hand, It
spilled all over the tablecloth And
Melissa rose, to stand. She
stormed off back to the kitchen and That’s
when the dream would end, I
seemed to remember a voice that said: ‘Be
careful now, my friend!’ The
cramps came back and they got much worse So
I went to have some tests, ‘Probably
just some gastro,’ said The
Doc, ‘Well that’s my guess!’ The
third time that I ventured to go He
cut a lock from my hair, ‘Whatever
it is, we’ll find it now If
there’s really anything there.’ Melissa
cooked us a roast that night And
set out some Chardonnay, She
was more into an amber wine And
opened some old Tokay, The
voice rang loud in my head once more, ‘Beware
of the grapes of wrath!’ I
tipped my wine on a native plant And
said that I’d had enough. I
thought of the Life Insurance that Melissa
insisted we take, A
couple of hundred thousand each And
the thought had made me quake. I
knew now how she had poisoned him, Her
husband, known as ‘Brad’, The
arsenic out in the potting shed That
I hadn’t known we had. She
died while having convulsions when Sipping
a coke and ice, I
sat and watched through the TV ads, I
know that it wasn’t nice, But
the Doctor said that the arsenic He
found in my lock of hair, Pointed
the finger, straight at her, And
said I was lucky there. She
must have made a mistake with it, He
said, and loaded the Coke, Though
I never drink the stuff myself I’d
not disabuse the bloke. I’m
off to the Riviera when The
insurance money’s through, And
Melissa, well, they’re hushing it up, And
Brad - he’s coming too! David
Lewis Paget © 2013 David Lewis PagetFeatured Review
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