WATCHING THE JOKER ALONE
This morning the air is cold. I stand underneath two contrails and breathe deeply. I want to sense the scent of the day, but the chill seems to have made it faint. It carries a mix of silage and leaves and I decide to call it Autumn Green.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a book with a yellow figure on it. I say it is one of my yellow stretchy men on top of a copy of ‘Reels’ from The Broken Spine. I love this little collection of cinematic poetry, and it seemed appropriate to photograph it for this week’s blog. I took time to have a gorgeous reread of it while it was off the shelf too which was a lovely accompaniment to a cup of tea!
There has been much for me to enjoy at the cinema lately. I absolutely love going to the cinema – it is one of the places where I know I am likely to be fully immersed in what’s in front of me. Being focused on one thing at a time is a pure joy and sometimes it can feel rather rare because I often have a tendency to do more than one thing at a time. Kath and I have watched The Long Walk (I am glad I watched it after climbing Snowdon), Downton Abbey (Kath’s choice to make up for my choice of The Long Walk) and Inter Alia (A seize the moment trip to make the most of a National Theatre Screening.)
There’s still something special about having popcorn and a drink at the cinema, and of planning what goes on the ‘want to see’ list as a result of watching the trailers, and I don’t think I will ever tire of this.
I like company at the cinema, but I am also happy to sink into a seat alone. This week I was recording some poems for a thing and I was wondering what to record. I rather fancied a theme of some kind. First of all, I considered my rabbit poems and then I decided because there are likely to be more yet to come, they would be better saved for a future date. Whilst looking I enjoyed rereading my poem Watching the Joker Alone which was written in response to a call out for cinematic poems from The Broken Spine. This encouraged me to see which other poems had found their home with this particular press – and a setlist was formed.
Watching the Joker Alone is one of those poems that captures a specific moment in time, and which might not even have been written if I hadn’t read the call out from Alan Parry. On seeing the call out I had recently returned from a solo visit to the cinema so I picked up my pen to see what might evolve. I remembered the feeling I had as I walked down the stairs to the exit as the credits rolled, and the poem took form on the page.
WATCHING THE JOKER ALONE
As soon as the lights go up
I stretch nonchalantly from my seat,
walk the centre of each step,
feel my mouth begin to twitch.
And there’s a roll in my hips
that wants to give me a swagger.
I imagine my lips red,
picture my head back laughing;
everything that’s in me
out in a fountain of sound.
Keep it all in, I tell myself,
just keep it in.
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