Fragment from “Waking up, Asleep”

[dr_con]

Fragment from “Waking up, Asleep”

 

See,

I don’t believe time is linear

if you stop        stop believing

despite the evidence of sunset/sunrise

full-moons marking calendars without

without a lunar cycle

 

the orb of reflection, repeatedly

repeatedly takes your breath away

And for a moment you’re not you

Rather, you’re a bicycle repairman

who keeps a diary

 

And you write:

“Is lunacy just the monthly moment

I wake up

I woke up to what was

what was really going on?”

 

You’ve never been good at keeping a diary

And you have memories from a cold basement

of ballbearing in a cup where

they nestled for years. For years.

 

See, right there another memory

implying chronology, a certain arrow

moving in one direction

 

Always flying halfway and halfway again

and again and again and again.

 

Falling Short.

 

There you are on a fancy red bike

With some sort of English name

 

Like Raleigh or Roland or Reginald

Having already bought into

bought into an anglicized romance

 

Of country lanes

 forgotten follies

Even now

Suburban streets fall away

 

Fallow forests at night

dimly, dimly the closer you get

The better it becomes

 

fear, anticipation, 

ending implicit in beginning

 

See?

All at once and everything

you would make a lousy

mechanic

 

All those little reflections

of the moon,

in your cup

 

Forgotten before you moved away

confusing cause and effect,

you edit out the accident:

 

Bent metal, a taste of iron, 

the smell of heather, and a distant

a distant distinct howling.

 

Obvious isn’t it?

When you see it like that.

 

[tonyv]

Remarkably fluid and accessible. From "stop      stop believing" the repetition becomes the vehicle -- a welcome, masterfully applied device -- which carries the poem from initial application all the way through to the epitome which comes to light in the form of the rhetorical question at the end of the poem. Very nicely done.

Tony

[dr_con]

TY! Tony Much appreciated. Hope you saw the revised version on Gate(less)? Corrected some grammar, punctuation errors, and worked on flow;-)

[tonyv]

On 11/9/2020 at 1:20 PM, dr_con said:

Hope you saw the revised version on Gate(less)? Corrected some grammar, punctuation errors, and worked on flow

Juris, I did. I compared the two versions side by side. Nice adjustments on the final published version.

I do like your Gate(less) periodical. I know you have a link for it in your signature, but you should also add a topic to the Promotions forum.

Tony

[David W. Parsley]

Doc, I too enjoyed the cyclical motions (the fluid and the disrupted!) in this piece, from the concrete repetitions, refrains, and bicycle motion, to the more abstract sense of recurrence, "the sun also rises."  But these cycles are imperfect, the ball bearings constrained in their cup of memory, ending implicit in beginning.  We participate in the cycling journey, or attempt to.  But in the end we are poor mechanics, poor journalists even, editing out the accidents and fearing even the most desirably nostalgic past as it begins to settle in, unable to keep our participation going for more than a few pedal-strokes before a new crash or breakdown.  Convincing portrayal of the perspective.

Thanks,
- David