Poems by Colin Herd

pretty chintzy
 
off stage i’d abandoned the
chiffon and spectator shoes but
i don’t know what i’d replaced
them with, not exactly. my memory
is pretty chintzy, just like i was
telling you: one bouquet for five
guys. i mean i refuse to do maths
but it didn’t take my head
long to get around that sum: a
couple of buds each, max, and
that’s supposing we gave tim
the stalks! and the office is plush,
what’s so strange, or a little.
 
would you believe that after
all the money he’d laid out,
for the party, for all of that,
and he’d look embarrassed?
well, he did. and it only made me
want to tousle him more, to
sink him or something, because
all he could think was that one of
his secretaries must have goofed
but really he wasn’t so bad.

 
embossed
 
arrington de dionyso is the front man
from the band “old time relijun.” he’s
on stage looking haunted, as if he wants
to infect us all with his haunt, like an extra
from the £45 cult hit zombie horror film
“colin.” he’s here promoting his new
album, a mouthful of a solo project:
“arrington de dionyso’s malaikat dan singa.”
drumming, he’s roped in owen curtis
williams. sometimes it feels as if it’s
impossible to see a band in edinburgh
without seeing owen unzip his grey
hoodie and crack his knuckles, getting
ready to play drums. he plays with
jesus h foxx, the pineapple chunks, rob
st john, randan discotheque, benni hemm
hemm and that’s what the old man said and
he never came back. he’s previously played
with emily scott, woodpigeon, our ladies of
sorrow, sher khan, eagleowl, tisso lake and
prose. then there’re these one-off flirtations
with visiting bands. i’m panging horrendously,
coveting that floaty, amorphous, polygamous
creative life, dreaming of enslaving myself
all the time to the whims and attitudes
of other artists but through that, well, i don’t really
know how it works, owen’s his own artist too, a
better one, because of the (must be)
exhilarating influence of all these other
bands with all their different ideas and styles.
anyway, the truth is owen’s so in-demand
because he’s a really great drummer,
his tongue lolling out, his head flung back, as if
his brain had slipped down his chest and that’s
what’s instructing the battering of
the sticks in his fists onto the kit. when i first
arrived tonight he was smoking a cigarette outside
and i did that sort of awkward nod. he’s wearing a
black t-shirt with a cute, angry, embossed
picture of a grizzly bear that i’m sure i’ve seen
him wear before.

 
we’re not dressing
 
the silk though there’s none
kind of sticking to where our
trousers would be the jewellery
weighing heavy on our fists:
inordinately, inexplicably, but
nice, not bad, all the same