How Deirdre dealt with The Beast from the East

A friend warned, ‘The Beast from the East’s coming soon.’

‘We must lock up what’s precious,’ I laughed,

‘our mothers and brothers, our sheep, sons and lovers -

those Vikings love anything warm they can shaft.’

But it wasn’t a joke and nor was it bad weather:

from Norwegian stock, it was ’arry from ’ull,

leather-clad, fury’s breath, on a bike he called Death,

on his jacket long horns and a skull.

He was seeking his bride, who’d escaped from his side,

dumped her helmet and fled his red Honda.

She had chucked him for me so we had to agree

that his wrath gave us both lots to ponder.

I’d risked it to have ’arry’s wife in my life.

She was rough-hewn, brash, sexy and cheered me.

(Her name was McGill. She called herself Lil,

though everyone knew her as Deirdre.)

’arry tracked us down to the Cinnamon Lounge.

We’d had nan and a chicken jalfrezi.

It was all going well as we mopped up the dahl…

Then a calm evening turned bat-shit crazy

for he burst through the door like the ’ammer of Thor,

vengeful, colossal, a fiend from the night,

and screamed, ‘Deirdre’s mine!’ - let’s face it, a claim

that’s simplistic, linguistically trite.

I might have made fun of the words that he used -

my sarcasm, at times, verges on the sublime -

but risking my bane I was forced to explain

like the baji I’d left, she was actually mine.

I said, ‘Come over here… Can I buy you a beer?’

Deirdre knew though he’d not mess about.

‘He’s a puss-ball of spite,’ she muttered. Too right…

’arry’s weapon was already out.

And, oh, what a sight it was, waved in the air,

the thickest and longest that I’d ever seen!

To be speared against the wall would be no joke at all -

an eye-watering ending, sharp, cruel and obscene.

In panic, I fled for the back kitchen door,

abandoning Deirdre, who trailed in my wake,

self-preservation my only causation:

‘God help us..!’ Sheer terror that no man could fake.

’arry flew after, like Huginn, Norse God…

Oh, but Deirdre was quite a performer.

As he passed her, she tripped him, he catapulted…

- liberation had truly transformed her -

…and he splashed down head first in a vast bubbling vat,

became calmer and calmer, then korma.

When with loud flashing lights the police cars arrived,

Deirdre’s pathos was poignant: ‘Alack! ’arry’s dead!

‘But it wasn’t our doing,’ she sobbed at his ruin.

‘He committed ’arry curry,’ she said.