until the hankerchief of history covers us with its times new roman black and white post script, i will wear lavender shirts in yellow painted public restrooms, looking like art decco in my september complexion and red against blue skies, and have those pictures taken to be proof against the dull mood of your highschool history teacher that we wore. color that we distributed the seeds of dead dandilions in the cement surrounded city parts, that we let our skin soak up the sun despite the advice of modern science, that we sometimes wore our hair long and let it curl and never combed it or put it in braids, that we taught ourselves to play the pots and pans so that we would have something honest to dance to, something soulful to sing to, and sometimes we had trouble seeing past our own reflections in the bedroom window, because it was dark outside, and the flourescents inside left shadows under our chests and sculpted the torso to look it's friday night fittest, yeah i'm vain, there was light here before there wasn't, and before that there wasn't, but seagulls still ate shallow water fish, morning boys still cast tall shadows and all the while the stars are slowly seperating.
There is so much to like in this poem. I love the nostalgic tone, the use of colour throughout and some of the alliterative phrases('friday night fittest', 'play the pots and pans', 'cement surrounded city') It's obvious that you have put a lot of thought into the language you used, and the way it sounds. I have been reading this out loud and I love it. There are a couple of little parts where I feel you could improve(tighten up and make a little clearer) that I will comment on at a later time, but for now I just want to enjoy the feel of this. Great stuff.
this all sounds super nice, i agree entirely with red it reads so well aloud the one thing i immediately noticed i didn't like was just the "yeah i'm vain" remark i just didn't think it needed to be there
you're so sensitive, you can feel a single hair curl while you're sleeping, and each fraction of a millimeter fingernail's growth. the candles are discouraged dont encourage the wind the candles will retire.
I listened to your taped epistle to Rachel stamped and dated, now I know you were really alive in nineteen seventy one. you carried God like a bouquet of balloons, Yoshua whispered in your ear your next move... "go on, get on that train." in your clay faced youth the rubber upper lip sounds out a bold pen sketch. were you talking bout your dad when you said, "Your fisted language still affects my style. Although I sometimes catch your visions like a child." do you still pray about me in your quiet time, cast out soft-core demons when I come back home, let some Nashville fake record your demo tapes? when I'm waiting at a train station or a bus stop. I also play "led by the lord day" in my own way. ------------------------------------------ listening for the hoofs of the rescue party. waiting for some ghost pony to glide into Berkeley with an old fish bowl for a tear trap strapped to its ghost saddle. it moves slow like an exercise bike on an airport walkway. something that wouldn't smell like ground ants or glossy magazine cologne, but a wet street after light late summer rain, a wooden match just lit, or something new in the green subject of a landscape painting, or something new in the foreground in a poster of some Asian mountains that says "Patience" in a funky italics.
indecision at high speeds can be fatal in car on horseback or bicycle. is an old cowboy in a wheelchair still a cowboy, just because he wears the cowboy hat? or a kid in a stroller with new boots on, can he be considered a cowboy yet? maybe you shouldn't call him that until he ropes one 'cause the country folks flock to the cities now the city people move to the suburbs and the suburbs spill into the country But a lotta kids these days deny their birth-right white kids, ashamed of their parents trunk, attempt to abandon their moneyed-ways. so they move to the ghettos and the communes searching for the guiltlessness of poverty. they wanna sit on the stoop when the night is hot and not be stuck inside by the AC. don't wanna treat their house like a fish tank they wanna share water with the neighbors when the night is hot. but the struggle that pulls doors off their hinges in a good way also leaves a slow murder in the air
