A poem about a petting zoo

…and the end of a relationship. The title is from the song “Take me in your arms and love me.”

Take all of this love of mine

As a child I was taught “The Fairytale Theory” which states that in situations of mortal peril human characters should always heed the advice of the helpful animals.

Helpful animals include rabbits, turtles and miniature horses.

So when, later in life, I found myself punctured and bent double with a broken heart, I went straight to the local petting zoo, suggested donation £3.

Initial feedback was disappointing. The llamas had nothing but barely intelligible platitudes and the pity radiating from the parakeets was crushing to say the least.

But then the amphibian keeper took me aside and said, “Listen son, you only get one shot at love, are you going to let her go without a fight? What if she’s gone from you, gone, gone completely and you’ll never wrap her back up under a duvet, or cook that yellow meal just how she likes it, or have someone tap to find where you are hollow and dark?” He gestured towards the heavily populated bull frog tank. “Take Herbert here. Do you think he got where he is today by giving up at the first sight of rejection? Go and tell her how you feel.”

When we walked home and you put your arm around my waist and buried your head in my chest and told me that you dreamt we woke up together in an Italian villa, 100 steps above the sea, in a village where the shop had only bread and salt and there were stalls selling giant lemons by the roadside, your hair smelt of lime flowers and your forehead pressed against muscles I never knew I had.

The ground grew sticky underfoot, but I had love on my side and hope in my heart, so I strode on, ignoring the owls and foxes stationed along my path. Out of the faraway corner of my eye I could see their mouths moving and their tongues waving like red flags.

A poem about Savage Garden

and their song, I knew I loved you before I met you. The stuff in the poem about angelic beings comes from a line in the song, ‘a thousand angels dance around you.’ The bit in italics is a mix of lyrics from other Savage Garden songs (The Animal Song, Truly Madly Deeply and Affirmation).

Savage Garden split up in 2001 and said they would never get back together. This poem is about what might happen if they did.

I knew I loved you before I met you

And what were the chances of that.

Meeting you, I mean,
here,
on the last leg of the Savage Garden reunion tour.

I’d say it was about as likely
as a thousand angelic beings,
with plum eyes,
and exquisite inflatable ears,
giving up the hot springs of heaven
to come and dance around our feet.

You ask me what my favourite Savage Garden song is.
I haven’t the heart to tell you
that over the years, I’ve barely given Savage Garden a second thought,
that I always found them a bit gooey,
slushy,
sickening even,
and that I’m only here because I won the ticket at a steam fair.
It was either this or a giant rubber duck.
The Animal Song I say, and you look pleased.

You talk.
Looking at the buttons on your shirt, I worry how my fingers,
which feel puffed with beer and half price sausages,
would cope with objects so delicate and irreplaceable.
I have unreal memories of running through the jungle,
careless and free,
to stand with you on a mountain,
and believe in love surviving death into eternity.

But when you tell me that you’ve been to every concert on the world tour,
from Sydney to Moscow,
I begin to worry that you might be a little unhinged.
It occurs to me, that for all I know,
you could be harbouring a whole host of bizarre religious beliefs
and unspent criminal convictions.
I have visions of our lives together,
you mooching around to a soundtrack of romantic ballads,
twitching at police sirens,
and building shrines to a succession of fraudulent low lifes
who have access to the intimate details of our marriage and bank account.
Driven over the edge by my refusal to attend church meetings,
you tell me that you’ve had it UP TO HERE,
and indicate, with a violent repetitive salute,
that from the middle of your forehead down,
you no longer wish to try and make things work.

‘It’s OK,’ you whisper, as I move sideways into the crowd. ‘This isn’t really my cup of tea either. I’m here with my friend Brenda. She’s a right sucker for this stuff.’

I’m not sure who hailed the taxi,
if your flip flops were lost when I carried you out of Wembley Stadium,
or into the hotel,
how Brenda felt about her travelling companion
vanishing like a flash of strobe lighting,
or the precise moment I felt your fingers discover my spine,
groove by groove,
and dust my bones from their million year grave.

But when you lifted my hand,
and pressed it against the perfect sphere of your heart,
I saw a clear snapshot of heaven,
of a thousand angelic beings bursting back through the wrought iron gates,
rubbing their plum eyes,
inflating their exquisite ears,
and jumping into bubbling hot springs
for the sheer fun of it.