Henry The eighth I am

[Jerrybaldy]

'I'm Henry the eighth I am'
I am singing aloud
In this toilet cubicle.
My singing voice is bouncing
between piss stained tiles
filling the blue block air.
Her red shoes still hold her feet.
My wrist aches.
'Henry the eighth I am, I am'
A scarlet skid mark
is a lazy river down the pan.
Her dress is riding up,
I pull it down discreetly.
'She's been married seven times before'
I recollect the knife.
My wrist aches.
The sweat drops from my nose tip.
Finally free, her head drops
and lodges beneath the rim
facing up.
I have never seen her look so good.
I kiss her lips
and slip the lock.
I climb the stairs
back to the street
where we met.
The heat blasts from exhausts.
I see another
who looks just like my mother.

[Delta40]

Ooh shivers up the spine there Jerry. I'm guessing this dude is a fat redhead with gross gammy legs to boot....Where is cardinal Wolsey when you need him?

[MorpheusSandman]

Very disturbing and creepy. I actually think it has the makings of a great short story piece, or maybe a semi-lengthy prose poem.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Astonishing, and handled with your increasingly confident artistry!

[Jerrybaldy]

Thanks Delta MS and Prince. I used to sing Henry the eighth over and over with my youngest daughter so I had no choice but to use it as a core to an idea of a man cutting through a prostitutes neck in a public toilet :D

[deryk]

Frightening! The speaker is akin to a male Salome. The toilet bowl is the silver tray.
I laughed at the last couplet and promptly realized they
were the best lines of the poem!

[AuntShecky]

For some reason, the titles of current short stories and personal poems on the LitNet borrow "pre-existing" titles of other stories, poems, and even popular songs.

Your title, I was old enough to recognize, comes from a hit by Herman's Hermits. (Lord, I haven't thought of that group in decades. For good reason.)

One criticism of technique: suggesting some consistency in the punctuation and capitalization. You've put capital letters in front of some of the lines but not others.

I agree that the closing lines of your piece make a funny punchline, but it does have a layer of psychological truth.Not too very long ago (at least more recently than I heard Peter Noone singing) I read an article about researchers discovering that males have to tendency to marry their "mothers, " by that I don't mean blatantly Oedipal but that they prefer women with personalities similar to that of Dear Old Mom. But get this, Jer-- women do the same thing! They don't really look for mates who are like their fathers; they're looking for male versions of their mothers!

RE: the violence, a la Sweeney Todd or Bluebeard.
I'll grant you that the original Henry VIII did in a
couple deliberately, but only two of the six women who were Mrs. Eighth. Remember the mnemonic rhyme?
Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, died.

[Jerrybaldy]

Thanks deryk
Auntie - thanks but a few points of order. Hermans Hermits were late in the game, it started in music hall in 1910 and your memonic should have ended survived. There is also a lot of dispute (due to anolements) how many wives he had. Apologies for some of the dodgy capitalisation and thanks for commenting.

[AuntShecky]

Thanks deryk
Auntie - thanks but a few points of order. Hermans Hermits were late in the game, it started in music hall in 1910 and your memonic should have ended survived. There is also a lot of dispute (due to anolements) how many wives he had. Apologies for some of the dodgy capitalisation and thanks for commenting.

Have heard about the Music Halls (via among other works, the great Olivier movie, "The Entertainer) but didn't know the song originated there. I learn something new every day on the LitNet!
RE: Catherine Parr -- she "survived" Hank by a year, that's true, but not, of course to this day. (Unless she had the same genes as Larry King!)