For Tess


from the ABC set 2007

I fell in love with a woman
from a daytime TV advertisement:

While she consolidates her loans,
all I want is to jump her bones.

Oh, Tess -
Like the loan company, please say ‘Yes’.
I want to watch you undress.

Though I can’t give you twenty-five grand,
I would settle for a one night stand.
Or just talk dirty in your northern tone
and we could have sex on the telephone.

Forget your husband and your children too;
they are only actors, the same as you.
What will you need all that money for,
when you know it is you I adore?

But I’m a couch potato poet, it seems,
with only a slacker’s dirty, guilty dreams.

Discuss this piece in the abctales forum