Untitled (after busker)

[RiverNotch]

Echoing an earlier critique, would have the lines that inspired this be in quotes (though if they aren't in the piece, then it doesn't actually matter).

Love is the only foolish 
adventuring we do, a story 
most convincing in the absence 
of the truth. Charming stanza. I suppose the foolish adventures of the past six years---of the past year alone, even---are all rooted in some form of love, whether the love of money or the love of death, assuming a "we" broader than the speaker and the addressed.

Part a pair of parrots, and 
they’ll pluck themselves to death. 
The clock starts ticking once the plumage sheds
its final breath. Echoing an earlier critique, the last two lines of this stanza sound great, but are somewhat confusing or redundant. Would just cut them.

I looked for you in London, where the air
is thick with memory—you weren’t there,
but your sister was. The cockles
made me sick. The first two lines of this stanza remind me of what I've read by Eliot, and I'm assuming from another discussion with the inspirer that it's a deliberate allusion. Then the last two lines are more grounded, the last sentence humorously so, which is nice.

Time accrues. It wraps around
the throat and closes slow, until
one morning, you just don’t wake up.
And you’re the last to know. Echoing both earlier critiques, this stanza as a whole is also charming, but somehow part of it is superfluous, especially the last sentence (I mean, if you "just don't wake up", then you don't exactly know, do you? then the last to know is actually the ones who find your body....). I suggest cutting the last two lines entirely.

Oh, and hopefully you think of a title, or maybe just have "After Busker" be the title.