Une Semaine de Dunthornes: Mardi a Vendredi

MARDI

In her day, Debbie Harry could get away with anything.
She even went unpunished for her crimes aboard a passenger jet.
1987, I recall. I say 'recall' - I wasn't half a decade old yet.
But I read about it somewhere. In Q, I think. One of their 'Remembering
The Eighties' issues. She'd got on the plane in the kind of get-up
no one else could pull off, least of all Courteney Love. Her purse
was styled to look like a revolver. Debbie was hardly averse
to shocking fashion, or trouble, but did become het up
when the stewardess, not understanding, tried to wrest the luggage
from her. In the struggle, her boobtube tore away - she staggered
into the cabin somehow, wearing only a pair of slightly ragged
leopardskin knickers. The plane, which was taxiing, went on a rampage.
Despite it ploughing right across the M25, no one was held responsible.
And anyway, the only fatality was another blond fool on a bicycle.

MERCREDI

The directions were useless.
The mist devoured his headlamp.
He had a cold. He had cramp.
The locals' quaint obtuseness
had not revived his spirit.
He found that whole forestalling,
hushed warning, eyeballing
entirely without merit.
The front brake like a latch
to his slow, fumbling hand.
This hadn't gone as planned.
The beast leapt to dispatch
the rider with its teeth.
Blond hair and blood sprayed the heath.

JEUDI

Some things that are incarnedined:
the face of a lady, publicly stripped
The scarf of a fire that is wind-whipped
The sight of a boy who pretends to be blind
The track of a ruby through greedy mits
The arse of a whore when deftly spanked
The whole shaft-length when roughly wanked
The heart of a family beneath a blitz
The meat of a kangaroo, salmon or swordfish
Jam (but not Pearl Jam, or Eddie Vedder)
The cheeks of a farmer, tanked up with cider
His daughter's too (because she's Cornish,)
His combine harvester's sun-sharpened header
And the cornfields too, when header meets rider

VENDREDI

I am not convinced by our doctor's skill with medicine.
He's polite enough, and intelligent. Seems well trained.
But his swift prescription for every kind of illness
is butterflies (or moths, if the ailment is strange).

Spicebush swallowtail for pubic lice.
Queen of Spain for vertigo, wood-white for conjunctivitus.
I've been gathering the proof for months.
One case here - tortoiseshells for partial blindness.

If your piles are playing up so much that you can barely walk
he cracks out the gulf fritillary, imported from New York.

You think I'm joking, right? A ringlet for depression?
Or how'd you like a comma for your multiple sclerosis?
That was last Winter. The patient wasn't exactly ecstatic.
A peacock-grayling cocktail to treat pylonic sterosis?

It's embarrassing to trek all the way to the pharmacy
for my restless leg syndrome cure. "Er. 20g of bath white."
And stand behind a lady who wants admirals for thrush.
And when my friend, that blond-haired, rambling poet

while riding, collided with a scissor shop display case
the quack stuck live lepidoptera to his gash-laced face!