Today baby, everyone is pert and beautiful
Photoshopped at perfect angle
Swollen lips, weak jaw, 2000 friends with guitars
Can’t keep up, even if I were two and twenty
Better my generation-X lost our film
Before developing
Didn’t keep a record, of that mistake, or this bad day
We pretend and forget, imprecision a comfort blanket
Not wanting to keep in touch, why force natural closure with technology?
We lost your digits and never knew your surname
A blurry mystery of poor memories
Was it that candlelit poet’s bar now closed?
No proof, no evidence, if a tree falls, does anyone know, if it’s not on Instagram?
I liked your home dyed hair, we shared night under looming sky in damp sleeping bag
You fucked my ideals of love when you slept with her
Sent me on my way with a trash bag of belongings
A dead squirrel slothing skin, lay ackwardly beneath your window
Its stink remaining when I was gone
Rumor had it you used her hose as contraceptive
I never french kissed again, or wore tights
Her name was Bo, there’s only my recollection to endear spite
If I saw her today, she’d be married, still tan and leggy
I’d be tempted to gaze up, crack a joke about what denier she preferred
Glad I don’t have a Facebook post about him
Or the other errors, or the other sins
We ran without skin, coats, phones, without GPS location
A bum camera slung on collarbone, for special occasion
Your grimy hands entwined in mine
We knocked our shins on tree stumps
You don’t need Technicolor to be lovers
You took a photo of me nude against the bed
When we argued I tore it up and now it’s zero
Thankful, as I hadn’t used a razor in too long
Along with you and your cigarette butts making daisy wheels of carpet fiber
We smoked when we knew it would kill us
We didn’t floss
Those were the days of ugliness, sloth and 3am torn condoms
I loved your 90s dirty hair and sunburnt cheeks
Keanu in The Rivers Edge, chasing Dennis Hopper and his blow up doll Mary through pine forest
Lying in dead grass in the park, watching topless girls dance with loops of fire
You pressed into my hips, we made out and I can’t remember much besides, the way your fingers felt inside
Perhaps I left early and rode the bus back through dark city, head leaning against grimy glass
Maybe we slept all night and I gave birth
To the ecclipse of time
Shifting and changing
No evidence of
Similarity to now
An imperfect
Paradise
Jesus, who’d be young again? You nailed that narcissistic, intellectual laziness— laziness tout court of youth.
Well, I think this is wonderfully written. It’s Thought provoking, and wantonly sentimental in a dark and beautiful way.
I loved this. Soulfully reminiscent of a part of life we can never get back but wish we could at times. Memories help us live those times again. Thankfully, I created a brain full of memories in darkness and light, joy and pain. They came flooding back while reading Imperfect Paradise.
Transported, instantly. Gritty sentimentality
So truthful
Indeed, there was a time when, if you took the photo the film had to go away to be developed and strangers to see, or a Polaroid now fading to fog. Yes, there were the unknown surnames, and even the hippies and culties going by “spiritual” handles and guru-given names, not to be found now. Some might now even be famous, rich, living nearby, or dead, but no way to know. We oldsters have the handicap and luxury of a private past, packed away with faded tie-dye.
Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
TheFeatheredSleep – memories of a time before Instagram.
Exactly! And it was a very good thing because now there’s absolutely no mystique!
💓
😉 💓
Thanks so very much dear Hyperion 💓 I agree at times a palpable longing, a lost mystique.
Dear Tylor, I’m very grateful to you 💓 plus you used wantonly so you’re covered in win!
I LOVE your responses!!!
❤🌸
So good! You capture dirty youth so well; it’s a re-blog from me :)) G x
Reblogged this on bone&silver and commented:
Absolutely love this dirty reminder of how our dating used to be, vs the current reality… such a good poet
Aahh! Totally happy! Thank you dear one. Dirty youth indeed!
Youth … a taste to be wasted.
Regrets and memories.
too many … too few.
Entirely my pleasure. Looking forward to more.
‘gave birth to the eclipse of time’ – so too clever, FFF 🙂
So so true. It was just a realer rawer time and so less airbrushed. I miss it. ❤
Today’s images can be no more than an aid to memory which will still be imperfect. Beautiful use of your memories.
A trip down the memory lane……how fun we had….at last we can replicate it in our mind through the indelible memories and our senses😍
🙂
amazing and I can almost visualize each sentence ❤
I needed this tonight ~ thank you.
Reblogged this on The Militant Negro™.
Wow. Absolutely gorgeously stated. ❤️ Agree with the above responses on the gritty and incisive nature. This is fresh as shit.
This poem agitates dusty memories in the awkward-youth-lazy-hazy-painfully-never-forgotten section … Brilliant 🙂
THERE SHE IS! How are you gorgeous one? I hope life is treating you well. Thank you for reading this. I know you would get it. Did you ever see the movie The Rivers Edge? I loved that movie. BIG HUGS beautiful x
Thank you! I will take that as a compliment!
I’m rubbish with movies … always got my head stuck in a book!! I’m great, life great, studies going ok (very tough) and I’m attempting to improve on the writing whilst navigating life 🙂 I enjoyed this so much – glad to be back – I missed beautiful work like this x
This speaks volumes to my anachronistic heart. Love it.
-A.G.
All those memories stirred up by your words….
Reblogged this on mesmasoutraspalavras.
Thank you so much for your kind reblog!