Almanac Poetry: ‘Tav Falco’ – Tommy Mallet

 

Tav Falco

 

 

Tav Falco played guitar
throughout my life.
The fox.
Sang simple songs
horribly, yet beautifully.

 

Maybe that was his charm.

 

I think of him by the fire,
past midnight,
while wife and baby sleep,
and rain falls hard
on the farm.

 

Stalk him, as one does
memories,
to see if they still fit.

 

*****

 

Tav Falco once used his music earnings
to make a gloriously cheap movie,
horrible,
but made it, damn it!

 

So full of his want,
it was superb.

 

Now, it seems,
he can only afford to
read scenes for the camera,
while at a café table,
with a long nosed girl trying to look
like a beatnik Hepburn.

 

*****

 

I devour every video
of Tav at that café,
past 60, looking suave,
soft focused,
with dyed black hair.

 

Close my eyes,
see every scene he dictates,
him young again,
hair the colour of crows,
strutting from sweaty stage,
to his mark.

 

The leading man.

 

*****

 

I’m sure the beatnik Hepburn
was promised a role.
I’m sure she can’t act,
couldn’t believe her luck.

 

Yet still did the video at the café.

 

It makes me adore Tav more.

 

I chose to believe in Audrey, as well.

 

Cast her, in my mind,
opposite him,
who is, of course,
as with most leading men,

 

standing in for me.

 

*****

 

The rain falls.

 

 

Love is not too strong a word

 

 

for Tav Falco.

 

 

I feel it for his passion,
fetishes,
his compulsion to express them.

 

Slick suits, finned battleship cars,
leopard skin cloth,
hourglass women,
his 50s retro obsession
has become retro.

 

So 90s.

 

I wonder if he sees it,
or is too caught in the swirl
of his gloriously
self-created world?

 

*****

 

The fans have dropped,
the views, the likes,
but so what?

 

 

Once,
every village in Hungary had
their own gods.

 

It took little to keep them alive.

 

*****

 

Thinking of that,
I think of a story:

 

What if an old world god,
from Norway, or some such,
had one believer left?

 

What if he, or she,
appeared in front of that person,
and begged them to not die?

 

What if Tav did that with me?

 

*****

 

If Tav Falco strolled through this
hard rain,
onto our grotty farm,
I’d show this deity
how to live forever within
a night, over one beer,
a line of conversation.

 

Adopt his stance,
immortality,
for the length of a moment,
as I’ve done thousands of times,
in my life,

 

before he became mortal, like me,
with dawn.

 

*****

 

If Tav Falco came to our farm,
with the rain,
we’d hit it.

 

Oh, I’d make him a god again!

 

 

Then, I’d see him wake up
on my couch, as he voiced his hunger,
brushed his teeth,
cough. Leave.

 

*****

 

Keep me, Tav!
Keep me as strongly as in my teens!
Let me listen to you,
to hear the echo
of such simple love of music
I once possessed.

 

 

I’ll be that fan again.

 

 

I never stopped,
like you never quit.

 

 

We just got distracted for
a while.

 

*****

 

Where are you now, Beatnik Audrey?
And you, Tav, surely the money’s gone,

 

 

how do you get by?

 

 

*****

 

 

Eventually, one of his best songs playing,
I get head nods,
too tired to write,
stubborn to sleep.

 

Outside, rain falls and falls,
the ground becomes soft,
roads dangerous.
Everyone on the ridge has had
enough.
They’re angry.

 

I think it’s superb.

 

 

 

More from Tommy Mallet can be read HERE

 

 

 

 

More poetry from Almanac Poetry can be read HERE

 

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Comments

  1. Malby Dangles says

    Love this, Tommy!

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