Snuff Shakespeare
Banquo is dead.
Zipped inside a body bag, ringed by Zimmer frames.
[Here comes more sugar for the shock.
Sweet tea clouds hang.]
What will they do now?
He’s been lifted up like a rolled up carpet and put on a trolley,
the audience look concerned,
apart from the three at the front in dressing gowns,
silently tearing pages from a pair of Mills And Boon romances.
He’s not the first, that was Hamlet.
The Prince of Denmark was followed by Romeo and Juliet a couple of weeks later.
[There’s a tray of Garibaldi’s now, pass them round.]
The trolley is creaking as they take it out to a ‘Private Ambulance’ making ruts in the grass verge out the front.
One of the nurses is clutching a see through bag with some rings and a pair of glasses inside.
He didn’t see it coming didn’t Banquo and now he’s behind a zip in the back of a transit van reeking of disinfectant.
The driver’s lit another roll up and is picking his nails as he waits for someone to sign his chit.
What do they write?
It doesn’t fit in a box that’s for sure, there’s a few sides of A4 to this one.
The phone’s ringing, it’s the coin operated one they bring round when people are out of sorts.
Derek answers it, he’s been told not to, but Derek hasn’t come here for rules.
‘Well, is that the next one then?
And what would I have to do?
Won’t the vinegar sting?
OK, try and get the ones in malt vinegar,
that clear stuff just doesn’t cut it.
And Terry will claw them out? Right-o, when are you here? Thank you.’
The phone’s down and Derek has already raised the front axle of his commode and is heading my way.
King Lear would be my guess.
Michael Scott is a poet and writer from Swindon, co-editor of Domestic Cherry magazine, Chair of BlueGate Poets and a founder of Swindon Festival of Poetry. This is his website: www.michaelscott.org.uk >