Soon, Again

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  • grooveamatic
    grooveamatic Posts: 1,374
    Sitting beside my mother in the pediatrician's office
    My tiny unsure hands clasp a brightly hued book
    Which I earnestly and quite seriously pretend to read.
    Are you reading, honey? she asks, grinning,
    And I, thinking she is fooled, reply,
    Yes Mommy. She nods, still smiling. I am very young.

    And now years later letters tumble out hell-for-leather.
    It is too easy to mistake learning for love, words for wisdom.
    .........................................................................
  • grooveamatic
    grooveamatic Posts: 1,374
    And the world goes by so fast
    Sometimes.
    All the concrete
    Anonymous trees
    And today, the rain.
    Things run by so fast
    Some say
    Reaching your hand out the window
    Could rip off your arm.
    I believe this.

    Stopped at a traffic light,
    The rain slows to a patter.
    I can see folks milling about,
    Buying soda out of soda machines,
    Under the hoods of their cars,
    Pumping their own gas,
    Paying, paying, paying.

    The light turns green
    And I am off again,
    Fast through the world.
    The rain joins the chorus of movement.
    .........................................................................
  • grooveamatic
    grooveamatic Posts: 1,374
    It is quietude I seek, you see,
    in this room
    in this quiet room
    I seek it away from you,
    these moments passed
    unretrievable
    unremembered
    anonymous moments
    where your face does not
    present itself to me,
    fades with each
    steam-soaked moment.
    .........................................................................
  • pearlposterfan
    pearlposterfan Posts: 102
    If I were a publisher I would publish this piece and sell it at Starbucks. Thank you.
  • FinsburyParkCarrots
    FinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    Top-notch stuff, Groovemeister! I like the very subtle shifts of nuance, in lines 1-3, between the existential state of quietude your speaker presents, and his description the physical quiet of a room. I also like the consonantal equivalences of "m" and "r", which suggest, in their very sound, a round, warm room, a womb! This insular, soundless place is the speaker's protection from the spectre, the recollection of the poem's addressee. The build up is good, too, from monosyllabic to polysyllabic words ("unremembered", "anonymous moments") which beat like a heart within the womb, a place of distance and comfort from an unwelcome memory.

    Yet, one asks: although the poem's chief subject is this room, the speaker seems to overreach himself in claiming he is safe from his memory, though he claims it fades. This is one reason why I like the poem so much; it understands irony in a nutshell, and with it, much of our human predicament: our failure to escape those who affect us most deeply. The phrase "you see" beautifully gives the game away: the addressee is most vital to the poem, and is asked to see what the speaker sees in retreat.

    Clever work!
  • grooveamatic
    grooveamatic Posts: 1,374
    You were wearing those loose brown pants
    (the ones I like)
    the day we saved it's life;
    we stepped from the hot car
    onto the shade-specked access road
    (our feet had just met)
    and the whir of cicadas
    (or were they just crickets?)
    was distinct and distant
    in the air around us.
    You were pretty that day
    (and I was handsome)
    although we rarely touched;
    the woods, I am certain, noticed us.

    The turtle in front of the car
    wasn't pretending to move--
    it may as well have been
    a steel shoe,
    dropped and forgotten
    by some steel, green-hued princess--
    I tapped it's shell with my Converse
    and it sucked it's snakey head
    inside. I gasped, the way I always do
    when turtles do that,
    or when anything green
    moves too fast.

    You picked it up
    like it was a softball
    and sat it gently on the mushy
    leafy road shoulder,
    although I suspect you didn't care much
    for the creature;
    still,
    your indifferent demeanor was like
    telling the world
    (or at least those woods)
    you didn't really care one way
    or the other,
    but you were sure gonna change things.

    Walking back to the car,
    I decided right then
    that you could have me,
    that I'd be your Prince Turtle,
    your Hot Shining White Sugar Man.
    .........................................................................
  • justam
    justam Posts: 21,415
    This was a fun to read because it has such a buoyant feeling. :)
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