... Whose Creative Temperament Needs A Bit Of TLC! :))

With my profuse apologies to Sheryl Crow and this is ABSOLUTE fiction, but of course! Besides, it is such a pretty tune and I have been singing along with it all day... And no, not strictly a poem either, but hey! Some of it rhymes, at least...

If you don't actually know the song, have a whizz to YouTube... you can spend your whole life there! Love K xx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acr5uqIj82c

FOR ALL THOSE FRAIL AND FRAGILE FLOWERS AMONGST US
WHOSE CREATIVE TEMPERAMENT NEEDS A BIT OF TLC…


He instinctively hunched one shoulder to protect the side of his face as he sat at the kitchen table, a wooden spoon whistling past his left ear. Then he winked his right eye and held the back of his hand against it to take the blow of the wet dishcloth. Without a word, he quietly stood up and turned to put his unused cutlery away in the drawer behind him while a cushion bounced off the back of his head.

She couldn’t see his expression but could read the taut arch of his body. She sniffed and wiped her nose on the droopy cuff of her oversized sloppy-joe. “God, I feel like hell tonight; tears of rage I cannot fight. I’d be the last to help you understand – are you strong enough to be my man?” Her voice was even and uncomplaining as she spoke, but then the realisation of her own words lit her up: “A song!” she crowed.

Her bare feet pitter-pattered on tiptoes as she ran to grab her old six-string from its stand. Meanwhile, he had left the kitchen and was noiselessly moving around the apartment, collecting up his socks and boxers from wherever she had allowed them space, plus a shirt that was hanging over a door, waiting to be ironed, and his CD’s where they lay scattered, serving as coasters and covered in stains. Plucking the first few bars of her new tune over and over to fix them in her head, she absent-mindedly followed him from room to room, not noticing what he was doing. But she hindered his emptying of the chest of drawers when she lightly perched herself cross-legged on its top, looking pert and dainty yet puckering her face into a Britney pout as she tried out the words: “Nothing’s true and nothing’s right So let me be alone tonight Cause you can’t change the way I am. Are you strong enough to be my man?” At this point he almost had a change of heart – until, in the mirror behind her pretty tousled head, he caught sight of his favourite cashmere sweater swinging from the wardrobe, knotted and being used as a kit bag for her sweaty gym shoes and lycra.

“Lie to me: I promise I’ll believe. Lie to me, but please don’t leave”. It had finally registered. She draped herself dramatically, drooping cruciform across the doorways as he tried go from bathroom to sitting room. Seeing his intention seemed set, she quickly collected a couple of utilities bills from among the piles of unsorted mail in the hall and stuffed them into the breast pocket of his ready-to-go jacket folded over a chair. “I have a face I cannot show; I make the rules up as I go. It’s try to love me if you can. Are you strong enough to be my man?” Her lyrics flowed thick and fast as her muse determinedly covered both his ears with the flat of his palms.

“When I’ve shown you that I just don’t care. When I’m throwing punches in the air. When I’m broken down and I can’t stand…” Lying on the floor, clasping both his ankles, she made him drag her slight frame along the carpet behind him. “Will you be strong enough to be my man?”

With a final bzzzzrrrp of his suitcase zipper, he shook his legs free of her, took up his jacket and left. She heard the click of the latch and the clatter of his fine leather heels descending the polished wood of the central staircase outside her apartment door. The song was finished. It was over. “I’ll take that as a ‘No”.

She sat up and sniffed again. Then crossed to a cabinet and got down the bottle of aged Rioja she has been saving, together with her favourite lead crystal glass. She looked up: the reality hit her. She ran her fingers wildly through her hair. “Come back!” she wailed. “You swine, you’ve taken the corkscrew!”