Okay, so I've been bad about posting new stuff, but I've got a bit of an
excuse, in that I've been working on this (*&%#$! poem for more than a month
now.  It's finally finished, sort of, so here goes...

It all started coming back to me
the first real days of summer, mulberry season,
and the sidewalk stained with dark circles where fruit has fallen
and something twists inside me and
        click - I'm remembering morning...
        click - daylight on Connie WebberUs farm...
        click - the mulberry bush spilling into the air like...
        click - with its branches up like a fountain...
        click - and you were there... I'm remembering morning...
                but no, it's all twisted up,
                the memory's tangled.

Personally, I'm inclined to blame this whole situation 
on too much television, because on television, 
memory is everything: the record needle slipping back into the same groove
or that locket from seven years ago that her hand pauses at
when she knows he still loves her, or those ruby shoes of DorothyUs
 that twist the ankles that turn the key that open the lock
that brings everything rushing back like cicadas after 15 years, like
        click - afternoon comes back to me...
        click - it was afternoon, on a hill...
        click - streaked and feathered with grass...
        click - red-winged blackbirds carving...
        click - ...their way through the atmosphere...
        click - afternoon...birds...
                And I'm scrambling for memories that
                just don't want to be found

'Cause for 7 years you felt the way a missing ring feels on its finger;
You, the girl of my once-upon-a-time dreams
Were as absent as the air around my face
And now that I find myself begging a ride home from - who else? 
And having to keep up my end of a nostalgic conversation 
Completely Unarmed...

It's the same game as it's always been, none of the rules are new:
I'm twisting like a rubix cube like I'm clicking my ruby shoes,
Like one more twist will expand my mind to make room for you,
One more click on this puzzle cube will bring my thoughts home to roost with
you,
One more click of the heels will trace my heartbeat's roots to you,
One more mind twist gets my psyche spinning in the groove of you
Like the astronomy that's coiling over my head is ruled by you:
Hundreds of thoughts of you in orbit and scarcely room for two...

Whole retinues of memories cut into puzzle pieces
And I'm twisting and turning, I'm sitting here ceaseless
Trying to fit them together and maybe defeat this
Mental block of mine that won't let me release this
        afternoon...on a hill...streaked and feathered with grass...
Scanning for clues so well-hidden they'd make the police miss
But I'm hoping my click-click-twisting will somehow unleash this
        daylight...red-winged blackbirds...carving through the
        atmosphere...
Playing the same record backwards in endless reprises
Hoping I'll catch from the song flowing back into the speakers
        this mulberry bush bruised and blossomed in the heavy air...with
        stained sweetness...
        this afternoon that hovers and buzzes around me 
        like an insect descending on fallen fruit

I want memories buzzing up from their holes in the ground like cicadas.
Memories should coil in my arteries like lead and pool in the base of my
spine.
Memories are supposed to push you back speechless.
They say that rememberance spins you 'round when you unleash it.
They said memories are storms, and I tried to believe it
'Cause to your lightning's afterglow I have to owe my allegiance.
I want voodoo spells to conjure up the whirlwind of the past
I want the magic of 1000-volt searchlights on the cloudbreak of the past
Psychic palms of my hands to boil over with the past in its vastness
But what has been is fastened down and I can't get past this
Mental fracture - and who knows how long this reaction lasted.
Who knows how long I rode overwhelmed by lost history
Or how long I dove in the oceans of bittersweet
Memory, looking over the treasure trove of mystery...
Click - that first meeting that permitted all this to be...
But here's the question - did reality deliver that bliss to me
Or is memory mocking me, laughing and twisting me,
Outright resisting me?  My brainwaves are blistering
But there's no antihistamine for this kind of allergy
No calamine lotion that'll soothe my mentality
No alkaline potion to quell the reality 
Of my aching mind - oceans are the only analogy
For how deep this runs - and like waves, my mind's churning
Turning over in its sleep while the house around it's burning 
'Till - click - all I can remember is this hopeless yearning
For a solution to this puzzle...


                ...but meanwhile it's something to do
a way to kill time during gaps in the conversation
while the girl of my once-upon-a-time dreams
is seven years later driving me home...

WeUll pass the puzzle cube back and forth between us
click - you remember the time in class when?...
click - you have any idea how long it's been since?...
click - do you recall how it was back then?...
click - another story pops up with a grin...
And she has no idea of the pathetic state my memory's in....

But in the next dream you are walking away in red shoes
across storm-parched ground, and where your heels tap the soil
out from your footprints and the cracked mud, memories
burst like cicadas          and you were thereI and you were thereI
Waving goodbye my heart clicks another quarter-turn
Still scrambled in place, but finally back where I began.

10 responses total.

wow. kinda grabs you and takes you in

information overload.  I need poems to be short; this one is too long 
for me to say something appropriately constructive :C

(sigh)

hee:), i dunno i like the long ones:) they can build up soooo much like this
one:) it just draws me in

/e is printing this so he can read it at his leisure sometime when he's
bored, then he'll be able to comment

Yeah, it is too long; even as something to be read it's too long.  If any of
you can think of lines that can be safely cut, I'd appreciate it.

Wow.

(I don't think it's too long...)

I don't think it's too long, either.  If you do shorten it for reading 
purposes, keep a long version too.  It's just beautiful the way it is. 
  Some of the "rhymed" sections seem a little awkward, as if they were 
notes that were intended to be fixed up later.  This poem seems to 
resist predictable rhyming, to me.  

Dan, I just wanto you to know that you are perhaps the only person I know of
who can regularly write long poems like this, and pull them off.  As I read
it, I kept thinking about how'd you perform it for an audiance-- the
"click"ing especially had a visual element to me.

All I can say is this...

W W W  OOO  W W W X
W W W O   O W W W X
 W W   OOO   W W  o

I like it.

(And the snowth slowly, quietly, carefully, trying not to alarm the natives,
peeps her head out of the woodwork once again... )

Too cool, Daniel, too cool.

The part I took out of this and saved, the bookmarked corner, if you will,
was the part that starts "It's the same game as it's always been..." through
the next line break. I think I just got caught up in trying to twist your mind
up to make room for someone you'd left behind in memories.

Cool beans... I need more poetry, dear. I'm still way serious when I say I've
seen nothing since at least the summer before last. And if you're not writing
any at the moment, I'm going to get pissy.

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