(I actually wrote and performed this for a feature slot for one of Kevin Reinhardt's poetry events, then never did it again. It wasn't the intention to abandon it so swiftly, but its Vonnegut-apeing quirkiness probably didn't seem quite as clever to me later on as it did the morning after writing it. These things happen.
I can't remember how I handled the "insert your own…" aspects of the piece. Pointed to the page, I think. That should be bloody high on the list of things you really shouldn't do in front of a live audience.)
I can't remember how I handled the "insert your own…" aspects of the piece. Pointed to the page, I think. That should be bloody high on the list of things you really shouldn't do in front of a live audience.)
We have all, at one point, fantasized about
“being” with celebrities.
Don’t try to deny it.
Don’t sneer at me. Don’t pretend you’ve never been
captivated by shallow glitz.
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Insert your own poem here:
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Eventually these dreams become tiresome.
Once the admiration of your friends
wears off and turns to jealousy so you
have no friends, you are left alone.
Your lover talks to Dazed and Confused
about the tragedy of war and a
new fragrance she has launched, and
you are merely a vampire in a hall of
mirrors.
For today, however, I am
imagining getting together with the
woman on the late news programme who is
researching corruption in the American
Military.
She sits, stuttering slightly, wearing
more make-up than she’s clearly used to,
trapped inside a television against her
will.
I know how things would run.
I would meet her at a party.
One of those crap London dos full of
rich kids talking loudly and
confidently about subjects they know
nothing about.
She would be fascinating and approachable.
Her angular nose would bump against
mine when we tried to kiss, but it
wouldn’t spoil the moment. We’d laugh, and
the pressure, and eventually her clothes,
would be off.
Her busy work talking to people she
hates and trying to extract the
truth would make her lonely, and so
she would need the slow pleasure of warmth,
would not see it as restricting or
suffocating, just liberating.
Maybe weeks, possibly months down the line,
her single-minded passion, her
interest in the world, her beliefs would
make her enviable company. If I
didn’t love her by this point,
I’d at least feel something approaching it.
But I have a life of my own, and I wonder:
How would I feel when, for the seventh
morning in a row, a tin soldier from her
war model kit, commonly used as a
demonstration
tool on broadcasts, got stuck in a bloody
trench in my foot? How would I take it
when she left me after
six months to do research in Kyrygstan?
There are always these doubts.
I know.
I have been married nearly a thousand times
to
different women, all for a few moments.
I quickly turn my attention to the PA on
the
sixth floor downstairs, the woman in
vintage clothing who lives on the
tenth floor of a run-down tower block,
the lady in the silent home film I have
found in the local junk store.
It always ends the same,
and I do about it what I do in real life.
I sigh and do nothing.
