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The Night Out

entry picture

for Paul

 

Going upstairs, I think of him still

in the bathroom, crooning. It's Danny Boy

or some doomed melody dredged up

from a past we're unable to share.

Nearly all of the words are missing

as he tries half-heartedly to reinvent them;

while the tune is sprightly,

pepped up for a night on the tiles.

 

When I played my records he told me

that music always needed a lilt,

a syrupy air you could hum

like a song of John McCormack's.

I was into the blues, the sax,

significance: no way that Muddy

or Dylan could sing!

 

His judgments were mostly like that:

definitive, unbending, like his sense of style

marooned in the nineteen fifties,

when the rest of us came along –

his wild locks restrained,

sleeked down with a blob of Brylcreem.

◄ Working Holidays

For Robert Johnson ►

Comments

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M.C. Newberry

Sun 18th Apr 2021 15:58

I recall that the poster boy of Brylcreem adverts was England Test
Match cricketer and Arsenal player Denis Compton. No girly gel in
his day!! ? I still buy it for its occasionally used reliable means
of keeping my remaining locks in place after a wash. .That dates me but I can live with it.

Philipos

Sun 18th Apr 2021 00:23


Alas David, none of us look like that glossy haired Lad in your piccy. Lockdown of a year's duration has well seen to that.

Enjoyed the read.

P

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