Objectify

(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.)

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.

Insert your own fantasy here    ---------------------------------------------------------------

Insert your own poem here:

I cannot do it for you.

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.