Thursday, February 14, 2008
more stuff about the past
This photo is of the fridge door - that postcard is a picture of my home town. My friend Drew went there a couple of weeks ago - he hadn’t been back for over 15 years, so it was quite the pilgrimage for him. He sent me this postcard and on the back, among other things, he wrote: “We survived!”
On the day, I laughed wryly at that, but it did get me thinking - specifically about the time Drew and I were at High School and the way we ‘survived’ by having a rich fantasy, day-dreaming inner life, where we basically created personas for each other that allowed us to be anyone other than who we were, where we were…
here’s a simple poem that came out of this postcard and subsequent thinking:
1987
They wrote notes to each other
as if it were New York in the 60s
or Paris in the 30s.
She is De Beauvoir.
He is Sartre.
She tucks art postcards
in his maths textbook.
He stabs rhyming couplets
to her locker with dress-making pins.
Their English teacher
gives them Bs. Tells them
to write what they know.
What they know is that it is Taranaki in the 80s.
What they know best is boredom and bullying.
So, for survival and at the risk of Cs:
She is Mo’ Tucker.
He is Lou Reed.
