Oh, yes, I recognise the scene today and the memory of yesterday.Strong,
Ken.
On 11 September 2014 08:30, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Really like this, Ken, particularly the beginning with the wonderful
> opening rhymes of broken/frozen and then the shift from Hamlet to ripe
> current vernacular. Should it be a full stop after 'ashes' rather than
> comma? Seems to need a longer pause here for the lead up to wonderful
> 'dessicated'. Latter part might stand compression I thought on first
> reading but then it's hard to see what to cut or revise. For me, the fifth
> stanza perhaps? 'that part'? 'Nasty garden' at the end is good again.
>
> Bill
>
> > On 11 Sep 2014, at 12:49 am, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> >
> > I don't even try to define them anymore, just that it's very
> weird-feeling. A la recherche de temps perdu or something like that.
> >
> > OLD GIRLFRIEND, SO LONG AGO, MET AGAIN
> >
> > The camera in my head is broken
> > so you've been flash-frozen,
> > the time is not out of joint,
> > simply then snapped into place perpetual.
> >
> > Flash-frozen, instant coffee, the piece of meat
> > you were back then, to me and to yourself.
> > "I can't love anyone," you told me,
> > "but you can fuck me anyway."
> >
> > I could and did and it was ashes,
> > we both fell down, dessicated.
> >
> > But today, passing on the street,
> > I almost did not know you.
> > How many years?
> > I'd pinch you to be sure that
> > this is not a dream, but
> > you'd probably call the cops.
> >
> > Gone beyond 1968 you see me,
> > and I remember that part
> > without memory of sensation.
> > It's my broken camera.
> >
> > I should have added
> > 50 years to your face,
> > grayed your hair, given you
> > extra pounds and maybe
> > even stretch marks.
> >
> > But then I'd have to re-vision me,
> > look anew, look now, at what I have become.
> > Vanity remains unchanged, but sadness grows,
> > a nasty garden of withered regrets,
> > of forgetting even what I've remembered.
> >
>
--
Andrew
http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
'Undercover of Lightness'
http://walleahpress.com.au/recent-publications.html
'Shikibu Shuffle'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/new-from-aboveground-press-shikibu.html
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