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Poetry


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Wearing Your Jumper

By alandavidpritchard

01 March 2006

When my friend left to follow his dreams, we swopped jumpers (woollen jerseys)...I was wearing his the day I heard the news...

They say Jacques found you hanging

from a beam above the staircase banister

and that your tongue was bluer than deep purple

and your skin was quite green.

They say the smell hit them next

and that Jacques nearly collapsed

when your body had to be cut down,

your clumsy dreadful weight uneasily carried away.

Some say your eyes were bulging,

others claim they were closed,

but all agreed the place,

though now quite gloomy,

was immaculate –

which says a lot.

You dangled, apparently,

like a pathetic metaphor – the desk sergeant

filing the report was admired

for his poetic flair and dark sense of humour.

(Like a lost punctuation mark,

he mused later over visions

of appearing on television)

Some say they will never forget the sight

and to themselves admit that it was actually disgusting

and Jacques had been sick soon afterwards

all over his new boots – his brand new boots.

For weeks they spoke of nothing else

at the salon where you used to work.

It is rumoured that Brandon, who found you first,

was inspired a while later to devise a new marketing campaign

for Hang It All Enterprises,

as well as being approached to do the set design

for a rising boy band concert.

He always had a neat way of dealing with death.

The reason, of course, was obvious:

recent ex-boyfriends shuddered

when they heard the news,

which is just as well.

I wish only to know

what you were wearing

the day you died.

Reviews

Written by shadowplay (41 comments posted) 2nd March 2006

Wow, this is an exceedingly dark and witty poem which really strikes a chord with me- my kind of humour.

I particularly enjoy the first two lines, effective as an opener, but I think you're missing out on describing the colour of the tongue in a more interesting way. What about 'as dark and as blue as midnight' or a similarly creepy metaphor?

I don't think Stanza two needs any work at all in my eyes. Three also works for me, as if there were differences in each individual account but the location was certain. After that, I think you go into too much detail about the Sergeant and that maybe the staza in brackets could be scrapped and the part that refers to him in the previous stanza put in brackets. I honestly don't think you'd lose anything and you take the poem off in one direction without ever following it up.

'Some say...' seems a weak snippet to include to me, and I find it difficult how people could truly find vomiting over a dead body 'disgusting', but each to their own. 'At the salon..' seems to be sitting on its own in the middle of the poem, referring back to the start where it might have been more comfortable. Otherwise this stanza just sits in space alone and serves to confuse the reader.

I like the penultimate two stanzas, in particular the reference to ex-boyfriends when I know I wonder what's happened to mine. 'Hang-It-All' and then a 'neat way' make the reader laugh and demonstrates nicely the way people draw from their own experiences.

The last stanza seems to me to be a bit disjointed, as if you should have pre-empted it with something like 'While others quested for more banal details / such as times, dates, locations' or something like that though obviously my turn of phrase is quite obviously mine. I do think it would really help to round it off in that way.

I've written a lot about this, that might suggest I didn't like it, but I envy you for being able to write something like this. The changes I have suggested are really just ways of polishing it so it can perform on its own as a poem.

Written by alandavidpritchard (57 comments posted) 2nd March 2006

thanks once again for such a detailed response..i am truly flattered that you took the time and effort and appreciate the suggestions made.
the poem is an attack on the small gay community i knew, hence the "They say" references...and yes, one of them had been sick, but more more concerned about his boots ..etc...
glad you liked it...performed it at the poetry cafe once and it went down well

cheers for your comments

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