Remembering Amy

It seems eerily appropriate that my first blog should be about Amy Winehouse -- on what would have been her 28th birthday.  I was there in Camden, NO not Arkansas, and saw the London police and ambulances not knowing that was HER house.  I then went to Harrod's and heard a song of her's playing briefly overhead.  It was, now in retrospect, kind of strange that Rehab (probably her best known song) was the one that I heard at Harrod's. She didn't die of a drug overdose.  More irony...

So here you go, Amy.  Enjoy.

Remembering Amy

on a hellishly hot day in Northwest Arkansas

I was there, Amy.

Solitary like you, and slightly lost.

Wandering Camden -- YOUR town, and wondering

the cost of those luxury houses.

Did they cost you your soul?  

Did the ghosts within those walls

haunt you like mine haunted me?  

Begging to be

free from the fear and the pain and the

constant rain of mascara and tear-snot.

I get it, girl.

Did the sound of the underground ‘round the square

make you quiver like it did me?  Fire-scratchy flashes

of metal against wheels. 

Barreling down The Tube

one

last

time …

What did you hear, Amy, in those final fraught hours?

Did you hear your heart pounding like mine did

when I heard the sad news?

Did you hear yourself cry aloud, “NO!”

I did.

Or was it a whimper, a final flinging of the finger

at your despised despots.

I hope it was a sigh of relief.  A whoosh of deliverance

from this whole hell hole as you slid into legend, and left the

earthly chains and pain behind.  Despised and dangerous. 

So close.  So near to your fear.  So quietly there,

yet unknown to you.  Just a fan.  A wannabe witness

to the lounge lizard legend.  Boring was never a word in your world.

Rest my lovely.  The world still remembers your talent.

©Andy Trevathan, 28 July  2011