Hotel Blue
(after John Ash)
1.
Above each of the sea-facing windows of Hotel Blue,
a canopy. At night the smell of fish and vinegar.
It’s a good place to fall out of love,
fall in love with someone else, a good place to tip out
clutter from your bag or pockets. On the way here you were
obliged to buy a pennant for the aerial of your car.
2.
One morning, in the sea-lit interior of the restaurant
of Hotel Blue, a stranger will pass by as you are
contemplating your cereal and say, You don’t know
how much your fecklessness frightens people. It
hits them like an electric current. And you’ll smile
at this barbed and random observation.
3.
The windows are open.
The sea is grey.
You wouldn’t for the world
compare this to anything.
4.
In your mind you are directing your own
Zombie Experience, wrapped in bandages,
dripping stage-blood, happy in the knowledge
that at least one person will take this personally.
That person no friend of yours, the sort who would
say, Visit me differently or don’t bother.
5.
Think of yourself as a wave, or a fishing-rod.
Slam a shore or dangle bait. Think of yourself
as a slightly open door. And then close it.
Too often you sense that you’re sealed in
a cardboard tube after the poster’s been
tipped out and unfurled. Your hand shakes
as you hold your book. It must be the coffee.
6.
These are the kind of random thoughts
that when chewed will hurt your teeth.
You worry there’s a hole that can’t be filled.
You worry your bandages will fall off
in the night, and that the apocalypse
was only valid as long as the leaflet was in date.
The Zombies are assembling in the play-area.
7.
The woman you’ve discarded
will follow that man
down to his evening boat
knowing she’s hidden his oars
will walk behind him on the shingle
recognising him as no rower
nor sailor— that he merely likes the idea of sea.
He’ll turn and she’ll be transparent.
as she sometimes is,
and he’ll know that she’s seen right through him
and will be relieved.
8.
The night is already full of murmured conversation.
Hotel Blue is glowing in the dark.
This is an interval in your lives.
Soon you must look to plots, masks
and backdrops of your next act.
The last page you read. There’s a sense
of everything closing down, waking up.
Pam Thompson is a writer, educator and reviewer based in Leicester. Her works include include The Japan Quiz (Redbeck Press, 2009) and Show Date and Time, (Smith|Doorstop, 2006). Her collection, Strange Fashion, was published by Pindrop Press in 2017. She is a Hawthornden Fellow.