Talking Heads and Me at Twenty Three

Pig tailed, she climbs Gypsy Hill in clownish spots,
stripes, pink DM’s and jeans as cut-off as she is.
Murder could happen across the street and she’d
not notice. All she lets in is the copied cassette
playing through her Walkman. Even the sun jars.

‘Stop Making Sense’ is her soundtrack, her mantra,
the only music she can tolerate that gives reprieve to
the hold grief has about her throat, broken otherwise
only by hysterical laughter or unstaunchable tears.
Especially dear is track two: ‘Heaven’: the place

where nothing ever happens: its meaning unfixed,
ricocheting between a retrospective paint job
and the reality that something did happen: her house
of cards collapsing over and over. She accompanies
David Byrne through a party that everyone arrives

at and leaves simultaneously, blind to the fact that
someone is out of step: Mummy Jo - has left the party
and the stranger at the bar who she brushes by
every week on the hill- Love, will not be met
‘til she’s twice her age, and given up on Heaven.