Creative Output

Come have a char with me, my dear,
Let’s turn the night to day
Swing with me from the chandelier,
I’ll have my wicked way.

It will be quite a scandal
if the two of us attach
for I am but a candle,
and you’re the perfect match.

But if I’m panegyrical,
then all I say is true.
I can’t help waxing lyrical,
can’t hold myself to you.

You lit my life up when you came.
I’m burning with desire.
But you’re still hot for your old flame
that flickers in the fire.

You’re blinded by your hearth of stone
to pain that you inflict.
I’m ditched, to gutter all alone;
there’s no peace for the wicked.

But noone said that life was fair
the winds of fate blow free;
if love and cold are in the air
then you’ll go out with me.

I’ve been so busy this week that I didn’t even have time to deal the cards until late Sunday morning. Nevertheless, during the week I thought about the letter F and the eight of clubs in general, and came up with two ideas: fate (F8) and the idea of turning off a light, since the F8 key turns off the keyboard backlight on my PowerBook. So by Friday I had decided I’d end up writing something about how everybody’s fate ends up with them dying. I didn’t feel too philosophical so I thought I’d write something about an existential lightbulb wondering about fate before being turned off.

When I finally dealt the cards, I accidentally took the eight of spades from the Best of Switzerland deck instead of the eight of clubs. This made me think of Fork and Tongs, and gave me the idea of writing another humorous love poem, perhaps with an affair between a piece of charcoal and a match at the same barbecue. I had a first stanza worked out where the match, as well, was in love with the andouillette sausage. Then I realised there was much more potential for puns if I used a candle, so the setting is perhaps a romantic candlelit dinner by the fireplace, where the match used to light the candle is then used to light the fire, and thrown into the fireplace.

This one is very much a first draft, I wrote the first stanza just before midnight, and at 11:59 I was still trying to find an alternative second line to rhyme with ’till you get on my wick’ (British slang for ’till you annoy me’, candle-speak for something rather more intimate, I would imagine.) I would also have liked to get ‘none of your beeswax’ in there somehow. If this were French, I’d have played on allumette (match) and allumeuse (provocative woman.)

‘Have a (cup of) char’ is British slang for have a cup of tea, and is rather too tame for the rest of that stanza, which is one reason why I wanted to change the second and fourth lines. But it’s too late now.