Here is my live performance of my poems ‘Am I a Poet?’ and ‘Working Tax Credit’, at Away With Words open mic night, November 21st, Off the Road Live Lounge, Hull.
Tag: Sarah Drury
Cards
My new business cards arrived today. I was quite proud that I’d designed them myself! I feel a bit pretentious calling myself a poet but that’s what I spend most of my time doing nowadays!
They’re to hand out during open mics just to get word around and encourage people to follow me on social media.
Chatroom Queen
Before the advent of Tindr and Snapchat
In a time when Facebook was not even an embryo
In Mark Zuckerberg’s pre-billionaire mind
And Instagram not even a glimmer of a concept
(I shudder at that thought!)
There were the internet chatrooms.
Ah Yes!
Thieves of regulated sleep and purveyors
Of illustrious one-night jaunts
And illegitimate kids a plenty
Illicit affairs of the QWERTY variety
Where one miniscule postcode typo
Could leave you meeting your lover
In Leeds and not the Loch Ness.
The dirty perverts would be loitering
Hiding behind
seemingly innocent sounding names
like Annabelle and Lolita
and there were no Androids or iPhones
for selfies of the kind where
you didn’t need lipgloss, mascara
or a Botox pout
but a genital Brazilian was
a fashion statement
and genitalia were a figment of
the digital imagination
And I would bide my time
Until the anonymous men would flock
Like mosquitoes around a virgin’s blood
Me with my labels
Juicylovejugs,
Whorezilla
Wombinator
I would hit on the cocky desperadoes
BigDick69
Dreamboy666
And other such delectables
Assessing whether the Price was Right
Win a dreamboat luxury yacht
Or a pint of lager and a packet of crisps
Down at the old Bull and Bush.
If you were lucky,
The Generation Game,
A millionaire with a pacemaker
A paper bag and bang
You were rolling in the cash
And having a tit and bum job.
(to raise your odds with the living squad. )
There were always the knobheads
Full of cocky bollocks
“If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me”
ME: “in a body bag”.
“I’m not a photographer but I can picture me and you together”
ME: “in a suicide pact”
“Are you a magician, because whenever I look at you, everyone disappears”
ME: “cos they were wise and got the fuck out”
“Are you religious?
Because I swear you’re the answer to all my prayers”
ME: “In the church of Satan”.
Yadda
Yadda
Yadda
For hours I would listen to
Disintegrating men sobbing over their love-bite ridden
Cheating ex’s
Before the advent of the fashion
Of the desparation
Of the proles
To splash their banal drama
Over primetime t.v.
The real weirdos would ask me for
My lacy knickers!
Not even laundered
But infused with the juice of
My unspeakables.
A quick rub with an old bit of cheese
And a smitchen of W40
Could have earned me a tidy twenty quid.
The pinnacle of my chatroom nights
Living my best days while
The drunks collapsed, inebriated
Slavering over their keyboards
With their goodnight message
Fuckimfuckedcanttypenighhhhhhhhhhhhhzzzzzzzzz
I met them all
As they cried into their microwave meals for one
Tears defrosting the frozen chips
As they looked for mummy to clean their nappy,
As they wanted to know what ‘I am wearing’
And I’d tell them they were crotchless
And not the granny variety
As they fantasised over my schoolday showers
And imagined a garden of a virgin flower
I saw it all
And nothing was a shock
For my sex education
Was born in a chatroom
In a hot seedy bedroom
Somewhere in the suburbs
With the dial-up tone
The signal
For hot, steamy action
Back in the 90’s
Living my best life.
© Sarah Drury poetry
Student Night
Student Night
Its student night down in Man Poly bar,
A girl with clothes no bigger than
a postage stamp with the queen in horror,
at these wanton bitches who’ve gone too far.
A girl with a skirt that skirts the definition
Of skirt, silk knickers on full display.
A sheer blouse makes excuses for a bra,
Breasts that plea for the light of day.
Standing to attention in a military style,
Enticing the trouser soldiers to come out and play.
Face painted, cheeks tainted, warpaint regime,
Slapped on, plastered, L’Oreal.
Lipstick staining, snogtime training,
Spider lashes, face from Hell.
Hair on point, that perfect barnet,
Hairspray choking, asthma killer.
Student starving, money all gone,
‘Cos she paid for a titjob and botox filler.
The lad is lairy, beer filled, cheery,
Looking for a shag if he digs for gold.
Using, musing, cruising for a bruising’,
Waiting for tequila shots to take their hold.
Long hair, short hair, alternative or goth,
Parading his affiliation on the heavin’ dancefloor.
Big boys, small boys, good boys, bad boys,
A label doesn’t matter when you know the score.
The drink flows freely like a river of oblivion,
Pints are necked and class doesn’t matter.
Snakebite, shots and dodgy cocktails,
Wallets getting slimmer and the tills getting fatter.
And volume doesn’t count when you’re trying to get laid,
Though you better love your pecker if you’re going for the latter.
Their bodies writhing to the pulsing beat
Heaving, breathing, seductive moves.
Girl watching boy watching girl watching him,
Trying to get some intimacy in between the grooves.
And a hand that gets too friendly and a girl who stands her ground,
And an incident that in reality is hard to prove.
And the night is getting older and the noise is getting louder,
And the joy is getting manic and the anger getting frantic,
And the boy is getting desperate for a screw for the night,
And the girl just wants a moment where her life could be romantic.
And I know these stereotypes are a little bit sexist
But these were long gone times and the craic was fantastic.
And she thinks of student nights and she thinks back very fondly,
She thinks how irresponsible they all could be.
But a good drink, a good shag, a good time had by all,
And she never had it better, ‘never did any harm to me’.
And the memories caress her like the times that she scored,
and the laughs and the tears and the comradery.
The nights she lost at Man Poly Uni.
In the days when she played and her conscience was free.
Sarah Drury 