Poem for Jake (and Georges)

Hi everyone,

I’ve spent a lot of today and yesterday thinking about Jake for the tenth year anniversary, and listening to the interview on the site. Have been reading for a while but haven’t posted anything yet, and over the last couple of days inspired by what Jake says in that interview I’ve been working on a poem about him and Brassens – I thought it might interest some of you. Hopefully the formatting will not work but if not apologies, I hope it doesn’t make it too difficult to follow what’s going on; listening to the interview should probably clarify a few things.

Plus de Georges

No sad adieus. Sudden Sopranos black;
the monologue dissolves to wildtrack.
Pipe smoke, like incense
grays the windows
of your Monmouth home.
The world remembered you in monochrome.
You mumble half a tune.
I seem to hear that room,
unstagey, ashtray-full.
The world – did it remember you at all?
But how could it forget
that leather voice,
that vulture face,
that forehead ploughed with sweat?

Your phrases drift, forgotten, fogged by sleep –
The Sherman. The castle. ‘One hell of a trip’
and ‘Natural History’.
Those vertebrae
ancient as rocks
held up now like a car on blocks
and underneath,
tobacco teeth
bared for a camera’s flash;
a child with an adult man’s moustache.
The closest that you got –
no double-acts,
no cheques to cash.
Performing dicks, the lot.

And by the phone that you won’t answer now
he sat – right here? They press you; how,
and where and why;
the day he died,
how did it feel?
Like catgut in a world of steel;
it felt like that,
you guileless prat.
Like well-worn tape
that keeps on humming past its sell-by date.
And you – I caught it in the gut,
ten years delayed.
I didn’t pray, but
Jake, I tried.
The world kept spinning like a forty-five.