Incidental Music by Claire Trévien

Let’s get one thing straight: he is everyman. He is you when you catch a glimpse of reflection in a window shop. He is the face you can’t recognize but is yours when you glance into a three way mirror. He has no nationality, he is perhaps Baudelairean. He is unimportant, but vital. He is a cliché, but so well worn that you accept it with a smile. He isn’t a poem, he’d never read poetry. Once, as a hint, the author put the following on a bus to see if he’d get the hint, but he didn’t. He thought the author meant his neighbour (who is also him, but with a moustache):

If this were a limerick.

Incidental music drowns his voice. He
Can rarely talk or hear, but he can mime.

If tears well up, he remembers his ears
And blocks them swiftly with over-ripe pears.

“Tis a pity,” he says, “to be followed
every…” but the rest is lost in Are and
Be. That time he asked that poor girl Chloe
for a spot of lunch, and a slap of punch,

(December 4th, in ninety ninety three)

her reply was savaged by the screeching
mandolins that follow the maudlin
with passion. How he ran our poor man, and

now he sits glum, listening to drums. The end.

Author bio:

Claire Trévien is a 24 year old PhD student living in Paris this year and taking an active part in its Spoken Word scene. She has recently been published in the Anthology ‘Dove Release: New Flights and Voices’ by Worple Press. Her writing has been been published or is forthcoming in anthologies published by Leaf Books, Cinnamon Press and Heaventree Press as well as in publications such as The Battered Suitcase, Nth Position, Pomegranate, Danse Macabre, Fuselit and Fingerdance Festival.