What She Was Into For a While
Take P.G. Wodehouse.
Clare did, meeting me every morning
with ‘what ho what ho
what ho?” and, when I
was not about to be called ‘Dingo’,
shimmering into talk of
“the good old F & B” (her brother,
Kieran) (Flesh
and Blood).
Though even Wodehouse
was better than the bands. That one
actually started
with Kieran I think,
who may already
have been using–don’t know for sure–only
that he was crazed by then, bringing his
guitar to school to practice
in the bathroom, cradling it
on the boys’ room floor, which I thought
freaky enough, but his fingers oh so fast, man, like
he’d taught himself to
flicker.
Though Clare, hurt the way he seemed
to just stop caring, sniffed ‘heavy metal,’
‘not her thing,’ her profile thinning against
her laptop; again, again
clicking on some My Space rif
(or ten) that (from my point of view) could never
buffer
long enough.
The worse was when I’d go
with her to a beer-amped
cave to actually see the stupid
band and one of the guys would
unhook himself
from the stage, buzzing
nonchalantly to
her be; ready, I could see, to take her
like a cigarette, quick and half-
smoked down, and I’d ‘hey Clare,’ even whispering
‘what ho?’ as if
a joke could break
the spin, but had to snake
my own way home, trying to shake
her out of me like my own
hair
out of my eyes.
At least she gave up on each band guy soon enough,
not admitting that the music sucked,
but that, well, it wasn’t so great after all, and we’d sit
on her parents’ couch, Kieran gone for good
then, gone
for bad,
watching Jeeves again and again
smooth out
everything.
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Ah. So here’s a rather odd draft poem that’s actually from a sort-of verse novel, called “A Good Thing.” I am posting it for dVerse Poets “Meeting the Bar”, hosted today by Victoria C. Slotto; the prompt to create a character.
The references to the wonderful P.G. Wodehouse, author of Jeeves and Wooster series, which I am quite sure Clare will agree are much much better as books (though there was also a very fun series starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.)
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