Welsh magic

My dad was drunk again,
melancholic and confusing in his cups,
warning me
in my infancy
of things he wanted me to avoid.
A long list of dark possibilities singeing my imagination.
A long list of dark possibilities that he'd always finish
with the flourish of;
"And never end up on The Game".

Yet this vague menace would drift out of my head
As we settled down to the show,
As I settled down to be seduced.

She glittered in the dark,
all heaving nipples,
yanked up in the most
compact of boned velvets,
cinched in,
droplets of blooded fringing, lashing the light
with every move.
And I thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
Mesmerising
because
she had laced boredom through her hair
she had rippled it down her body,
in braids of ennui.
Her legs shrouded in fishnets,
flashing alabaster between the runs.
She filleted the stage with the feet of Betty Page.
The nicotine spattered silver bunting,
left up from a long forgotten Christmas do,
even got up the energy to sparkle,
reflecting crystallizing light onto her pale face.
A TB heroine straight out of Poe.

And still, and still, as he bound her up in a coffin,
dancing and dicing with death,
her throat thrown back, her circus hair curling around
his cutlass,
she still looked bored.
Perhaps the possibility of being cut in two
was duller still than the prospect of hustling, again,
in this graveyard of ambition,
in this shitty city tonight?

It was the first,
but wouldn't be the last time I longed to emulate a hooker.