The Helter-Skelter

Stanley Spencer - Helter-Skelter, Hampstead Heath 1937

By the helter-skelter at Southend-on-Sea; 

          just next to the ring-toss, 

listlessly twirling your candy-floss stick,
like it was my heart.

You looked at the ground; 

your words echoing back up to me from between the sweet wrappers, 

       condom wrappers, 

               and discarded raffle tickets. 

I stared intently too, as though, 

              through this mutual perusal of the individual blades of grass,

we would come across some solution,

                        scrawled on the back of a packet of crisps,

that would make up for the deficit on our own part,

        to come to an amicable conclusion of this sorry state of affairs.

Whilst I was dissolving a bite of your candy floss,

                   (which I had swiped in an attempt to turn an awkward void

       into an endearingly content silence,

                              but which had served only to seemingly rile you,

                                                                  and make my fingers unbearably sticky),

my own name pierced the air.

       Like a pin to a goldfish in a plastic bag,

having been punctured,

     now let forth an unstoppable stream that,

                                          despite my best attempts to remedy the situation,

             through clasping hands slipping at his rapidly deflating world,

was slowly suffocating him.

As you spoke,

I was all too aware of the congealed lump

      of sticky, sickly, sugary substance,

      wedged to the palate of my mouth;

                       and I regretted having taken the preventative action some 30 seconds previous,

as it seemed to have achieved little,

and I hate the taste of candy floss.

"It won't hurt forever".

But it did. 

                          For a while,

                                                  at least.