Ich Habe Einen Doppelganger

Your regular Saturday blogger wishes me to advise you that he's taking today off - a well-earned rest, blah blah blah. Apart from anything else, he thinks he's got nothing at all interesting to say on the subject of Doppelgangers. At various stages of his life he has been told he looks like Peter Fonda, Ben Fogel, Roy Hudd, Jeremy Corbyn! Big deal - what does that prove according to him? ...merely that absolutely everybody looks a little bit like someone else sometimes.
However, given that he is a conscientious individual and most mindful of his responsibilities to the great reading public, he has contracted a body-double to write this week's post on his behalf. He fools himself into believing that you won't be able to tell the difference. Ha ha ha, our little secret. Bunk like a poet and pay the price. Enter the stunt blogger!
Doppelgangers: they're German...we are German. (Ich bin Doppelganger... Ich habe einen Doppelganger etc). You buy one and you get one free, but the free one is often bad and frankly not worth having. We are none of us normal. We may not even be real, but mere reduplicative hallucinations. At best we are contrived and full of literary conceit, with an annoying habit of cropping up in the wrong place at the right time. At worst we are dark and twisted mirrors of our alter-egos, the complex and troubled 'evil twin' and we will destroy you. I shall stop there.
Oh yes, there's a poem. The regular Saturday blogger wrote and left it for you, so I'm not going to take any credit for that. Anyway, I think it's rubbish.....

Van Gogh Dans Le Metro
I saw Van Gogh on the Paris metro
in nineteen eighty three.
He was riding the line
one early evening
from Boulainvilliers to Clichy,
a piteously tortured soul
engaged in earnest conversation
with a chain-smoking friend,
spitting bitter phrases
I strained to catch but couldn't quite hear,
some intractable problem, I guessed,
with his fiancée - she not a great listener;
there was much tugging at his ear
and smiting of his breast
with calloused hand.
The friend deliberated,
blew smoke rings.
The stricken artist,
racked with nervous energy,
drummed incessantly upon a knee.
Our train slid in to Pereire-Levallois.
The smoker broke his silence,
spoke his words of sage advice.
Van Gogh growled, inhuman, inarticulate,
picked up his bag of brushes,
dived through the carriage doors as they closed
and was gone.
Or it might have been Ginger Baker...
Thanks for reading. Have a good week, S ;-) Email This BlogThis!Share to Twitter Share to Facebook

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