JINGLE NERVED, ALL SCRATCHY SKIN

I shall be interested to know what you make of this poem. The events happened just as they are described.

Wiped from a migraine,
jingle nerved, all scratchy skin.
I'm dealing with the July sun,
morning, driving south.
Then Charlie's there,
and him near six months dead,
but still, here's Charlie in the car.
If I look directly I see an empty chair,
a glance from the side of the eye;
the light pours through him, from him.

So I talk about nothing,
as we did those nights,
a malt in hand and a record on.
I drive the Sunday morning traffic,
I am in no hurry, Charlie smiles.

Exeter eventually.

I tell him I need to get a ticket.

I return to an empty car.

It needs work but the essential elements are there. One of the difficulties with writing I find, is judging how much I need to set the scene. That is why it is a good idea to put a poem away in a drawer for a couple of weeks, when you return to it you have a better perspective on what needs to be removed.

Here is another work in progress.

Don't try and deny it, we all have.
Isherwood was offered China,
but only if held his lover's hand
and jumped from the Weimar frying pan,
into the flames of the advancing Japanese.
He chose not to. Perhaps
that's why we remember such moments.
The conversation halts, you look at me
across the debris of the meal.
I let that one pass, twice.
And outside the Hayward sunset in your hair,
those eyes I could have fallen into.

Maybe this reality we live in,
is the negative result of all those opportunities not taken.

In, I think, Goodbye to Berlin, Christopher Isherwood writes that his lover, the owner of a large department store offered to take him to China, if they ran away that night. He did not take up the offer.

I think this one needs more work. I am not sure about the layout and if it isn't too wordy. Definitely one for the drawer.

I leave you with a song that has an exquisite set of lyrics. Paul Simon singing Rene and Georgette Maggrite and their Dog After the War.