TALK TO HER : A Prosaic.

                                           (Idea for a Poem for two voices)

                                          After the film by Pedro Almodavar

          When I was young I was idealistic, 

          Like my daughter when the moon full and finished hangs

          Like a huge goldfish bowl of light

          Between the dark and angular slabs 

          I was, Ideal, I shone. My eyes shone. My hair shone.

          My skin shone. I shone.

          Like the moon shone

          And the idea of the moon

          Because she says we can't photograph this

          Our perspective gives us a more perfect focus

          And Image than we can ever reproduce

          Mechanically

          And I would dive deep into novels To find out about life. 

          And life itself dives deep into us

          Like a knife

          Like bitter surgery

          I would eat novels for breakfast.

          Surgery is after that which would eat us

          I would eat novels at night.

          Surgery would remove the piranha cell

          I would read novels about Women to find out about women, 

          Women : these mysteries that men fear.

          but the novels began to have the effect of eating rich Food in an overpriced restaurant.

          I began to notice a vaguely unsatisfying but persistent Nausea. 

          When the world is coming to an end

          When as a child we first encounter death

          When those girls that were our friends

          Disappear

          Where do they go?

          When the boat sailing first so smoothly encounters the storm

          We hold our stomachs 

          And turn as pale as cherry blossoms

          Floating on the water

          And I began to notice that many of these, mostly American novels, but not Entirely, Anna Karenina etc, were teaching me about how
          to court women. And romance yes

          I was learning the classical nausea of romance

          The classical sea-sickness of love

           

          How to Chase, but not necessarily what to do at the end of the chase, 

          And what do I appreciate now that the dance is over?

          once a woman was courted And caught. And I began to notice that most of these women awaited only one fate :

          I appreciate the obvious and the prosaic

          That the men writing the novels did not appear to know what to do with a woman after That. 

          I appreciate that you brought me the orchestral Beatles music

          That I loved and could not find

          And I began to notice that a lot of the women appeared to have to die.

          I don't like,

          Gaylene, I don't like coming home at the end of the day

          To the dark and empty house

          There were Car crashes and suicides. You know the kind of thing.

          I don't like the emptiness in the bed next to me

          Like the emptiness under an ocean

          The emptiness that makes death seem attractive.

          I began to dread the end of the Novels and inevitably the end of those wonderful women. Consumption was often a Romantic end.
          Very Dickens and now I think of the many meanings of that single word In our more modern world and somewhere in my dark and
          unfinished soul I think that Many women today also die of consumption

          I don't like the silence

          Where once we spoke and I cooked for you.

          Now, many years later, in my middle age

          Perhaps I don't deserve things now that I am old

          Perhaps we are only offered so many chances

          So many bites at the apple

          I miss us going shopping together

          I go to see the new film by Pedro Almodavar and reflect upon what must laughably pass For progress one hundred years after Freud
          and Virginia Woolf.

          She who filled her pockets with stones and walked

          Into the cold water

           

          Why do I feel like I am drowning?

          What does it mean that when I began this poem we were together

          But at its end

          I am alone?

          The women now do not Need to die, but apparently they must be comatose. Unable to speak. Unable to have a Voice. So after all of
          this and after years of talking to men about women and women About men and women etc, I would say, yes, Talk To Her, but also,
          let her speak

          And for Christ’s sake, when she speaks, listen.

           

                                                                                                   Lyndon Walker

                                                                                                    At Warburton

                                                                                            Sunday, March 09, 2003

                                                                                                        5:26 PM.

                                                                                               Second serious draft

                                                                                           Sunday, August 31, 2003

                                                                                                       11:12 AM

          First composed and read live at La Mama Poetica : Monday 24th February 2003.