Love and Hate

I wrote this little opus for the second "Pub Poets" open mic meeting that took place on 1 February in the wine bar above the "The Old Town Hall" public house (Poulton). 

Prior to the event I read it to some friends and relatives, and they wondered if it was about them. It wasn't, honest.


Love and Hate (I Feel It In My Fingers)
There is a couple that I know:
a pair of O A Ps
and at first glance you’d say there’s no
two friends as close as these.
They walk along, their arms entwined
but that’s just here outside.
Indoors that isn’t what you’d find;
your eyes would open wide.

He loves her, he hates her,
He complements and he berates her
It’s been that way for decades now –
so many ups and downs.
He thinks back, the claptrap
that he has heard and said back,
sometimes he cannot figure how
they came to be such clowns.

He feels it in his fingers –
a knife of tempered steel.
His smile – it surely lingers
as she tucks in to her meal.
Rememb’ring when they first were wed
he’d cut her sirloin steak,
but now it’s words that cut instead
with each exchange they make.

She loves him, she hates him,
she knows she irritates him,
she knows the insults that she throws
can cut him to the quick.
But sometimes, at bedtimes,
those “think of what you said” times,
she looks at him and then she knows
he’s loved – despite the stick.

She feels it in her fingers,
Her hands around his neck,
They may be both mudslingers
But their marriage is no wreck.
The stiffness in his shoulder there,
the corns upon her toes;
though both are growing older, care
is given, highs or lows.

She loves him, she hates him,
She elevates and she deflates him,
The arguments on which they dwell
They seem to make them thrive.
He hates her, he loves her,
wonders where his boxing gloves are.
The aggravation serves them well –
it keeps their minds alive.