Galway Smile
The girl with the Galway smile was giving me grief,
she even thought of being my wife,
but a slim body and a penchant for poetry
couldn’t hide her inner cruelty.

She doted on a childhood sweetheart -
a financial adviser in the City,
he’s known as a character in all the pubs.
But little does she know he’s a master thief
who did time in Wormwood Scrubs.

I have trailed her from poetry evenings to meetings
as diverse as Crochet Knitters For Peace,
amateur attempts at the musical Grease,
and a Morris dancing convention in Much Salop By The Avon.

While I became a laughing stock at performance poetry evenings,
with my verses about fat women in
Blackpool wearing kiss-me-quick hats,
the politically correct audiences who frequent these events,
warmed to her non-rhyming verses to her failed relationships,
while I poured the wine and handed out the biscuits.

But political correction was not on my agenda,
just the girl with the Galway smile who teased
me with her quickstep feet as I fell all over
the dance floor at Walthamstow British Legion,
then sang a song so bitter at Much Hoole folk club’s
weekly singers come-ye-all evening.

And then as we waited for the bus and
she half-interestedly kissed me for the first time,
I noticed an advert for online dating and
discovered I could amuse women with my funny poems.

And what’s more they rhymed,
like the one about a chambermaid easing
an elderly vicar out of her truss.

A year later as I walked down the aisle,
I winked at the girl from Galway who’d
suddenly lost her smile.
Kevin Vose