Smokin’ Sister (guardian angel)

She pulls the gallows lever

And leaves their sentences dangling in mid air

Stepping a strangling tarantella.

The cat that gets their tongues lives in shadowed corners 

Eyes brighter than the furnace glow of her fag’s end-

A look that spits ‘if you think you’re brave enough…’


Cutting through the tar nights 

Cutting boys down to size

Their slurring vodkabulary concrete-grazes its knee

Black-blue-bloody in the wake of her K.O thesaurus fist

Her turn of phrase that turns and turns and

Smacks them, with metal ring knuckles ringing their ears for the foreseeable 


In the low nights

When I am wide eyed and frozen

By the slurring sliding hands of the interloper

Face crumpling beneath that oppressive inebriated grin

Heartbeat in my ears 

(The shrill cry of a dog beneath a tyre)

 A figure steps between myself and heartbreak 

In all of her smoking glory,

The static glow of her forked bolt anger

Warms me to no end


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