The Kemptown Verses

By JJ Leahy

The Duchess Cassandra Eccles

I

A body at one time, like a bloody Ferrari
Lushes her mobile all day speaking Polari.
Poor in pocket but with advice she’s rich
Please fuck off sweetie, cos you’re a bloody bitch,
Playing White Heat on her MP 3
Screaming to life’s cinema, well come look at me!

Now Cassandra Eccles had a special friend
To her needs hedonistic, he’d devotedly attend;
Answering to the name, of Harold Biddie Winks
A free sprit indeed – with some very strange kinks.
He called himself brazenly, Lord of the Laines
But originally from Chertsey, just south of Staines.

II

They‘d dance all night, then out to dine
On cheap pork curry and on apricot wine;
Cassandra’s obsession with gambling the game
Before her operation, she wasn’t quite as tame.
Hurtling towards, her own inducted hell
Days spent in the bar, some nights in a cell.

Well Harold was a scoundrel, through and through
Still a lovable rogue, and knew who was who;
Had an electric persona, a later day star
But sacked from his job, at the golf club bar.
I was framed you know, but they said it was theft
Now he breeds Dodos, the only one left?

Our Duchess with one hundred – body piercings in all
On Saturdays she sells corsets from her Gardner street stall,
Harold had a goatee and full sleeve of tats
In their gordy but beloved, flat full of cats.

III

The importance of life, is just to have fun
Indulging desires, they know how it’s done.
They partied till dawn, like crazy old things
Stoned on the fragrance, that the deviant brings;
They drunk in the Zone Bar, on proceeds of crime
And passed out in elegance, to return another time.
With enigmatic eccentricity to igniting the town
So dangerously wild, almost burned the house down,

Acting like baboons, on Special K they’d revel
Evening spent at home – they’re chasing the Devil
Their skin become ravaged, by smoking and wine
The missing days, should have served as a sign.
Gaunt ghostly looks, create wrinkled glamour
Coughing chest pains, like attack with a hammer!
Now barred from Poison Ivy, the Karaoke bar,
Cos Harold’s rendition of Beautiful – was a step too far.
This frivolity Cassandra, is bloody killing us
True Harold my darling, but don’t make a fuss;
Both prone to blackouts and inclined to faints
Oh! Seamen and sweat of a thousand saints!
Burnt out bodies, obsessed with self pleasure
High on pills and their injecting at leisure.
Ramping up doses, to extravagant use
A constant crazy dance, of pleasure let loose;
Exhausted and shattered, after a fashion
Now briefed of emotion or self compassion.
Such tortured souls, now enveloped by coma,
The smell in the flat, a rather heady aroma.

IV

Ridged on the bed, in shells they lay
In stasis for a year, a month and one day.

Now things of the past, the dancing and lust
Slowly growing an eerie exterior crust;
Like giant hard pods, they’re lying so still
Were they dead meat, or were they just ill?
The shells were cocoons, so shinny and black
Until one ominous day, the crust it did crack!

In a champagne moment, they’re born again
Yet neither as women, nor born as men.
But genderless entities so magnificently new
From their shells emerged and promptly grew;
So sparkling fresh, so alluringly soft
With giddy excitement they stretched aloft.
Huge butterflies majestic, emblazoned in glory
The truth here narrated, a metaphoric story;
One thousand colours, leap from their wings
With physiques anew this metamorphosis brings.
Raised up with grace, out the window they flew
Each stage of life, well, just passing through!

To create an art form, from life’s lost spillage
They exist no longer, in their bolt-hold in the village.
Cassandra and Harold as people are no more
But the adventure continues, to all that’s in store.

Flying passed the Old Steine and way over the pier
Higher and higher, into the blue so clear;
They soar into freedom, to a welcoming sky
Sailing above the earth and never asking why.

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