Will You Go With Me? by Paul Timoney
Yes, said she in the shed
On some conditions.
And I never caring what they were or would be.
Wanting only to stop time for a spell
So I could scream into the sky by way of celebration.
To spin and fizz and spurt and spark and fizz again,
Like a mad lad miming fireworks
For an audience of much applauding angels.
Stack upon stack upon stack
Of standing ovation,
And making a tree laugh
Suddenly
So that everyone around would turn and say –
“We didn’t know that you could laugh”
And he, the tree, replying,
“Yes, well, I can, but never was amused enough before.”
And me then…back to me…going on a roll…
Plucking down clouds from the high horizon,
Arranging them upon my head
To form a fluffy wig of steaming curls.
Using lightening bolts to arc a halo…
And impersonating God,
But altering his voice to make him sound slightly homosexual
And doing a whole gag about him being something of an interior designer
Giving out to the humans for destroying the Earth.
“Goodness gracious me would you look at the state of it?
Yis have the entire place turned upside down??
And I thought I was bad with the flood
But I wasn’t squirting Texas tea all over the shop.
And what did you do with the lovely rainforests?
I had them gorgeous
And where’s me tigers?
Pish- a-wish-wish…pish a wish a wish…
1…2…3…where’s the rest of them?
And who said you could enslave them fellas
Oh…I don’t know…
Sher stop…I can’t turn my back on ye for a minute!”
And then letting on to get very cross
And whacking a super nova across the galaxy…
Scoring an accidental bull’s eye
Into a black hole…
It whooshing back through time…
And extincting all the dinosaurs…
And a gaggle of dead velociraptor ghosts
Shaking their heads in mock disgust…
And me sort of saying “oops”…
Followed by a hope-filled pause…
And everyone laughing again thank goodness.
I could have rearranged some stars
To make a drawing of her there
In the shed,
Sitting on her step-dad’s lawnmower.
But instead I…
Refrained…restrained…contained myself,
In as much as that was manageable…
Though ecstasy surely snuck out somehow,
Probably via the eyes
And my unstoppable grin.
“You have not heard the conditions yet,” she chided.
But it did not matter what they were…
For there was nothing or nothing or nothing or nothing
I would not do if she would agree to be my girlfriend.
She began…
” One…You can’t tell anyone.
Two… You are not allowed to kiss or hug or ever touch me.
Three… I can go with other boys if I want to.”
I was twelve years old,
And seeing as she moved away that summer
Without a word about our separation,
And I have never since done aught to beak up our agreement…
She is still my girlfriend.
Making ours,
The most long lasting
And successful
Romance
That I have known…
Which is also a little depressing.