Seasons greetings to you and yours. I have been ill and so missed my weekly post. Here's a memory from forty plus years ago. It has taken a while to get it on the page.
1979
for this birthday she rented him a VHS video recorder
we all marvelled at the squat black rectangle
she had to set it up because he was rubbish at that sort of thing
it was timed to record Casablanca while we went to the pub
then began to watch this film we’d all seen many times before
feeling free agents now adrift form the tv schedule
but it stopped as they sang La Marseillaise abruptly a screen of white noise
because we’d turned it on before the end of the transmission
I moved to Plymouth so didn’t see them for a year
and when I did they were no longer a couple
she’d met a man had was having a baby
he was drinking with a serious I had never seen before
she told me their life together
could have been summed up by that afternoon
optimistic starts that abruptly stopped
It was nearly a prose poem but I thought the long lines could carry the story. It is mostly true. It revolved around abrupt endings. How things never turn out as you think they will. I think it needs to go away for a while now and when it returns I shall see all the errors.
I've been taken by Naissam Jalal's new album Healing Rituals. It is a work of beauty.
Until next time.
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