<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Fred<\/strong><\/p>\n Mr Davis kept tropical fish He rolled grizzled Rizlas His daughter had moved Mr Davis spoke <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Shadwell Smith<\/strong>\u2019s poems have most recently appeared in Butcher\u2019s Dog, Prole<\/em> and Picaroon Poetry<\/em>. He also sometimes appears in pubs, clubs and coffee shops performing them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fred Mr Davis kept tropical fish and a tidy garden front and back. It\u2019s as good as fertilizer that he said, throwing his urine from a bucket on the lawn. He rolled grizzled Rizlas with the fingers of one hand. Showed me places on a map where he got his tattoos. Talked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14461"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14912,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14461\/revisions\/14912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nand a tidy garden
\nfront and back.
\nIt\u2019s as good as fertilizer that
\nhe said,
\nthrowing his urine from a bucket
\non the lawn.<\/p>\n
\nwith the fingers of one hand.
\nShowed me places on a map
\nwhere he got his tattoos.
\nTalked over glasses
\nof lemonade
\nand navy days spent
\nfighting Germans
\nand the Japs.
\nMr Davis had won medals.<\/p>\n
\nto New Zealand;
\nsent letters, postcards
\nand colourful paua shells
\nhe displayed
\naround the house.<\/p>\n
\nand sang to his wife,
\nthough she\u2019d left him
\na widower
\nwith the tick of the clock;
\nwatching the glimmer of fish
\nin a luminous tank.
\nAll at sea.
\nBubbles
\nand thoughts
\nascending.<\/p>\n