stayed.

Now, where was I

when the young girl asked

"who do you like best, Michael Jackson or Prince"?

Or

at what age did you realize

that you were capable of loving?

At what hour did the ice pack

unfreeze so that  the polar bears could

not hunt seal, harp and hooded,

and yet had to settle for

sea gull  double combo's

and penguin nuggets?

In the fifth grade mother

made for me a cap of

a used stocking and sulfur

so the ring-worm wouldn't spread.

But

i'm not complaining about the 60's/

or the Loving Spoonful

or hippy sacrifice,

or Khrushchev backing down,

or anything great and ballistic.

And it doesn't matter now

if i've put on a layer of fat,

with disturbances arising from

flying and all those

associated psychological

problems.

Reviews

[Tree]

I've read this a few times already and yesterday I tried to post this elaborate review but the w/c ate it. Took the steam out of me, but here I go again... Prince was more of a true musician, I think. If you pushed his music out now it would stand the test of time, meaning it would translate well, the older stuff.... The Beautiful Ones? That was my jam in middle school... In regards to this piece, as a whole you know how much I enjoy and respect the way you not only bring history close enough for us to taste and feel, but the way you weave your own earthy, and vivid memories into them.

Well done, d

Diego

[m.s.early]

In the back of my mind this poem speaking in words of utter truth. With each repeated read a layer of obscuring dogma, prejudices, and preconceptions are remove and a little more of that truth gets exposed.

There's a lot of left over late twentieth century explaining the twenty-first. A great contemporary write for our generation. This is fundamentally and socially brilliant.

[Horizon K.]

at what age did you realize
that you were capable of loving?

With time and experience and age, it seems those places where magic happens, shifts places. Believing in Santa and the possibility that monsters might snatch us in the dark may go away, but someday, we may begin to believe in things like God and True love. Where our minds can expand and find resonance with things that fly... The moon creates waves just by being herself, they say... Not a psychological disturbance, but a law of physics. If we don't allow ourselves to consider the possibility, we will never understand. And we have to remember where things were, to see where they / and we / have gone...

A poem of memories becomes a pondering of the profound. I enjoyed this so much, Dana.

[Cory Barrett]

I feel like We need to go for a drink

[Jill Reidy]

Excellent. I have read this four times in succession. I love the start and I love the ending - and I love all the bits in between.

[K. Louis]

this is great..love that ending.real

[Beccy]

Life unwinds at its own pace, but those memories stay constant. They perhaps fade a little over time, but so does everything, aside from that 'layer of fat.' Your poetry is quite fascinating.

Beccy.

[Emily B]

I read your work and I want to climb mountains, graduate school, academia mind numbing mountains. Because your words are more exciting, better written, more heart tugging . . . i don't know what they think they are doing

when they should be stopping here to learn how it should be done

[Delmar Cooper]

I wrote a long comment that WC ate and shat away. Let me say I love you. That is I love the poet that lives in you.

[Britney S. Lewis]

It starts with a simple question, yet it is so much more than that.