Imperfect paradise

TheFeatheredSleep

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

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36 thoughts on “Imperfect paradise”

  2. Well, I think this is wonderfully written. It’s Thought provoking, and wantonly sentimental in a dark and beautiful way.

  3. 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.

  6. 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.

  23. 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😍

  30. 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

  32. 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

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