Three Tim Poems
Akhil Katyal Tim calls from Brighton Tim calls from Brighton, panting, I ask him what’s wrong with you, he says he wants a bit of friendly advice but mainly needs my cue for ranting, I plop myself on the bed and give him the ‘Go ahead.’ ‘If only,’ he says, ‘I could forget him, all will be fine,’ he’s lonely, my instinct says, but I listen to his words an’ keep a tab on mine, but soon, Tim, without a sense of proportion, as is usual with him, lets his grumbling decline from the high themes of love and loss, to how his day had been, what he’d read and what he’d seen, how he goes to the gym, to gather moss, for the hot guys, but still, hates to get on the treadmill. We yack about his daily itinerary, bitch about the world, and wax literary, ‘Love, you know Tim, is a bit like your treadmill, where else would we sweat so much, with heart-rate gaining, think about time elapsed and the time remaining, and run like that (we don’t want to be parted) only to end at the point we started.’ Returning from the Piccadilly Cinema Tim thought it slightly odd that, after a movie, he would think so much of him. To overreact to a film might seem a little sad to you, and so it did to Tim, but movies, they do that to you. Walking back, he thought of those days with him, ‘what’s the point,’ he asked, ‘of looking into the past, it only tells you how long misunderstandings last,’ yet this twenty-five year old kept on chewing the plot in his head, the guy in the film, he remembered, said ‘I love you still, there is no point lying, in the end we’re all dead, or dying,’ on his way back, Tim did not think of anything as far as tha’, but wished he knew, tonight, if not how to set right what now was riven, at least to know how much he had to forgive and be forgiven. (Thanks to Vikram Seth) Tim’s day out in Falmouth (Cornwall) As the sleeper moves more south, more west of London, some place names come weird, the rest you just cannot say (what we don’t know (Cornish) we let it lay), it halts at Taunton an’ Truro, an’ Looe an’ Learkside, an’ when you pass all these, you reach Gyllyngvase, if you please. Tim had to give a lecture; that done, earlier in the day, he goes out into the evenin’ sun, obeying what his supe’ had to say, ‘Cornwall? perfect, don’t forget, once you teach, go hit the beach, they don’t come more blue.’ That was true enough (Tim saw some surfers too) but he’d always been skeptic of small towns, never could stray from the centre of things, for him, it was always either London or New York, cities which call a sfork a sfork, where you shout (you want to) when you talk, look out (you have to) when you walk, not these one High Street towns, damn, ‘what to make of Falmouth,’ Tim frowns, ‘these small Cornwall seaside downs,’ so much so that he feels a bit dismayed, when the owner of the guest house where he stayed, says ‘Back from the beach? So you goin’ to hit the town?’ ‘What town,’ Tim almost said, then felt silly, might as well, ‘can’t just sit here, shaking me willy.’ He went out, and in about half an hour, he was glad he was there, the street was full of the seaside air, not many people but under these lights, this night felt different from all other nights. He walked into a pub where 3 men sat, ‘let’s try,’ he thought, ‘some sort of sea port chat,’ he was afraid, though, that it would not click, all sea-talk he knew was in Moby Dick, but Tim, you see, flirts a lot when he’s on a trip (he trips a lot, that’s another thing, when he flirts), but three pints down, he forgets the fear and turns a little loud when speaking to one third of the crowd, ‘What’s your name,’ he asks the red shirt, ‘Chris,’ ‘new around here?’ and then that is that and this is this, they talk till they are well past the intro, and are now poking fun (at each other, when did he do this last in London?) they ask the full names of the other. ‘Chris, Chris Weizenbaum’, Tim laughs and says ‘what’s sort of name’s Chris, for a proper Jew boy like this’ ‘Why, what’s wrong, did you expect Jacob or Moses?’ ‘No no, that’s too much, but at least a Leo,’ Tim went on, when he thinks Jew, he thinks talent, he thinks of Jerry Seinfeld or Woody Allen,’ and slightly tipsy, Tim imagines them passing their baton on to Chris, and all of Manhattan (Jew paradise) is suddenly this, and this, here, the Falmouth night wears on, the nip in the air enters the door, the barman here, seems to be done, ‘we’ll close now, sons, it’s already one,’ (urgh, small towns!) they walk out, more like, they flow, in a bit, Tim gets to know that Chris is Irish, he laughs, ‘Are you thinking what I am thinking? Gay and Jew, and Irish too, think of all the cards that you can play.’ ‘Well it would seem,’ Chris says winking, ‘all three have come to use today.’ (Thanks to Howard Jacobson) Akhil Katyal is a Delhi writer currently based in London. He blogs at akhilkatyalpoetry.blogspot.com. adminhumanitiesunderground.org