Sick-Love in Keighley

At first the man in the flat beneath the young woman’s flat above,

Thought her screams, howls and deep sobs

Were nothing but the signs of a couple in sick-love.

And the same for the banging and furniture flying.

They rowed violently at least once a day – without fail.

These things simply overturned the make-ups;

Just as the make-ups overturned the rows.

Perhaps, he thought, she was the type who believes sick-love must be proven allover and allover again.

Must be written on walls with blood.

Must be shown in the obsessive possessiveness

Of the one for the other,

And the other for the one.

The man below the wild woman above, began taking notes.

He placed them neatly in his mental jotter.

Soon he noted that “her man” was silent when all hell was let loose.

Only her screams could be heard.

The boyfriend, a well-known pusher-about-town,

Stayed strangely silent during her eruptions.

The man below the woman above, concluded that she was mad – plain mad.

He’d believed that the rows were rituals of true sick-love.

Now he believed that each time she screamed

(As if Death was having her)

She was having her mad half-hour!

He thought this each time she methodically, in her madness,

Smashed up her flat as if her prison.

The voyeur below the observed above,

Now understood the noise he daily endured.

Her manic tantrums were much more than the feeble affectations

Of a couple in ordinary sick-love.

Her spooky howls were as if Satan was inside her.

As if he was ripping her drugged-up soul apart.

Did Satan want her hidden parts?

To take them back to his more-perfect Hell?