Poem: Just You Wait Til I Get You Home

I once saw the lead singer of the Pet Shop Boys sat across from me on the District Line. Me and the kids were heading back from lunch with my wife at a Garfunkels. West End Girls played in the background and I uttered some asinine observation about how their shows used elaborate staging because the duo themselves were so inert. 

And here he was in front of me, an hour later, slumped in his seat without any dancers or lasers to distract from his obvious knowledge that I was trying to take a sneaky picture as my free hand fumbled to keep my toddler from destroying the communal furniture.

I have no idea how that might have all looked from his vantage point. How the internal film of one’s life might manifest when that life is already a kind of film. My poems have never serenaded diners at Garfunkels or the Harvester, for that matter. The only direction my life was headed was from the West End to the East End in a strictly literal sense. 

I liked the song when it came out, when I was ten years old. We played it a lot one winter when we drove to Ireland via the ferry from Fishguard. I'd never been to East London in all those years. As a place it still can leave me feeling adrift and uneasy. As for Ireland, I became unmoored after my Granny passed. The mental island that represents it within my thoughts still bobs up every now and then, a pastoral refrain within my city slicker neuroses.