Frankenplot - The Volunteers

 

The volunteers, 

Charity shop on a Thursday

Yellowed fingers in the pages

Search for hidden photos, love notes, 

Pound notes and Penny Blacks

Pointed high heels so powerful

They changed the topography of her feet

 

Lantern-jawed and silent

Checking the Clarice Cliff for cracks

While watching young blood 

And wondering how it tastes

Soft hands rifling the racks 

Items he shook and flicked, hang sadly

Boob tubes bobbled by the rub of slow dances

 

He likes it when they’re all the same size

The crammed width of a Stag Minstrel

Homeless now that she has died, passed on

He holds the dresses close and despairs

It’s not protocol to include underwear

But there must be a way, he thinks

 

The woman behind the counter

Glares and is often sour for no reason

‘Curtains, no, we don’t take those.’

Her time is free and her vigor is a bonus

‘The young never had it so good,’ she says loudly

‘I was a war baby, one egg a week!’

She goes home to sit on her nest eggs

 

There are so many trinkets

Sad things which don’t perish with dignity

It’s the thought that counts and the thought

Is washed away in ever stronger currents

Objects on a carousel of meaninglessness

Real things you can touch are dead weight now

A roll of bubblewrap to keep them alive

 

Fingering the vinyl makes him feel young

He was there, his needle carefully placed

Too carefully he concludes now 

If only he’d feared less the scratch of life

He might still be hearing music 

Instead the woman shouts, ‘this hat smells bad.’