A few years ago, I had a large harmless growth in my left armpit, called a lipoma. I had to get it removed as it was growing and had reached the size of half a grapefruit. After the surgery, the medical staff told me they had decided to keep me in, as they wanted to keep draining blood from the incision, and because the growth had been a significant size. They wheeled me onto a ward for the night and gave me lots of Oromorph – liquid morphine. I had a lovely time, just me and my blood bag and occasionally some food or drink.
Some friends of mine were soon to get married, and I had promised to write a poem for their wedding. In my half-lit morphine clarity, it came to me. Words and phrases filled my mind already formed, strung together by a unifying theme. So visceral, so relevant, so unique. I woke up in the morning trying to hang on to every precious phrase; I was convinced I had a masterpiece!
As soon as I got home I wrote it all down in a frenzy, lest I forget. When I came back to read it, a few days later, I was dismayed to realise it was completely inappropriate for a wedding. In fact, should be rated X, let alone inflicted on children and grandparents! What had I been thinking?
I had been thinking Hannah and Josh like sushi, that’s what I had been thinking…
Wasabi baby
Look at you
You’re so raw, fresh, pink, squishy and salty
I just want to lay you down on the kitchen counter
And (after a bit of a pounding), when you’re tender and moist I’ll gently spread you…around
I want to lie you on a bed of sticky white heaven
On concave avocado pillows with cucumber sticks
Clouds of rice envelop your savoury treasure like a feather duvet
In sheets of mossy seaweed love letters
Held by manly mats of lusty twig
I want to roll you and roll you like a mattress
Size you up in my fist like a bursting cylinder of love
I want to squeeze you tight
And split you into mouth sized pieces
I want to stuff you in my mouth all at once
With my erect chopsticks
Greedily, and quickly lest we let the moment pass and fall to pieces
Squeeze it all in and get the satisfaction, the sweet, the salt, the squish, the sea
The perfect union, the delicious harmony, you are my pickled ginger umeboshi tentacle
I want to be with you
I want to be you
I want to wasa bi you
wasabi!
You have such punch! You are eye-wateringly delicious!
You make me feel alive with your zingy ding ding,
I inhale your power and come alive!
Of course I overdo you, fatally smothering you on like mushy peas, but I don’t regret it
Loving you so much it hurts my face, I cry with ecstasy, I exist for you, with you, in the here and now!
Watashi wa anata no jūbun ni eru koto ga dekimasen
Now my darling, come over here, and bring that plastic fish of soya sauce
