I recently went to the Musee Mecanique in San Francisco with my son. The place is built for nostalgia. Everyone I knew in the 1980’s had at least one video arcade game where they could dominate. After spending many quarters up and down the Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk, Centipede became my game (along with Galaga/Galaxian & Zaxxon). You see the DAN in the photo? The kid can still do his thing!
i could try to put
all the words back together
months and years of poems
those fragments, pieces of bone
structure of love, my body
of work, endless expression
of our boundless truth
when we were both
younger, before
but now
only this
no more 8am waking up, dean martin really can’t stay, chestnuts stop roasting, the hallmark channel starts to countdown from 364, the radio quits playing it’s the most wonderful time of the year, dead christmas trees adorn city concrete, jimmy stewart disappears back into nostalgia, family says goodbye, credit card bills get paid, calories are cut, gym memberships rise, green & red sweaters go back into cedar chests, thank you cards are written, hot chocolate loses its luster, mistletoe romance becomes memory, new year’s resolutions begin, to do lists resurface, everyone gets a little older & 2023 says goodbye.
i wonder where you are, i wonder if you think about me, once upon a time in your wildest dreams, moody blues 1986, he sent her the song on a cassette in the mail, like a message in a bottle, old & scraped, washed up, on her shore, no one listens to the moody blues anymore, she replied on a postcard, but thanks, 10 years had passed, he never wrote her again
held together by shreds of faded fabric, pages torn, inside inked December 1914, that cursive once on chalkboards all across america, found it in the trash where my father had placed it, rescued history, my hands cradling the past, how could you throw this away?, i thought, but never said a word, her poems carefully pasted next to drawings of men and women, little girls, dolls and dogs, lakes with sailboats, christmas greetings from the 20’s, dance cards, foxtrot, lindy hop, young love in pencil marks, pressed carnations, color long gone, diaspora of flower petals wedged into the treasure’s every crevice, army v. navy football ticket, pink powder puff once pressed on a face, my grandmother’s, her life still here, with me forever.
we care, we don’t care, ballpoint pen, sharpie, maybe a pencil, use words like dude, sign with love, air out grievances, i guess we did have a few little arguments this year, address complicated romance, i suppose we’ve said before that everything was a mistake, but i really don’t feel that way, attempt humor, have a nice winter! make fun of teachers, doesn’t ms. earle look like grimace when she wears the purple lab coat? express bland kindness, you’ve been really cool this year, and i hope to see you around, give unwanted relationship advice, make sure to keep your girl in line, she’ll run all over you, talk sports, oh and by the way, the Braves do not suck, comment on music, STRAY CATS RULE! forget who’s yearbook it is, jim, chemistry wasn’t great but we made it to june, and this quasi-document, could be pompeii, everything, and nothing
survey the merchandise, canon, pentax, nikon, kodak, know the prices, how many dollars to preserve memories? tell the customers about zoom lens, color quality, shutter speed, sell them one by one, talk spanish sometimes, if they are from el salvador, remember the war, they fled that war, try to remember, speak with co-workers, allen, who rides a bike because he lost his license, yusuf, from pakistan, college-educated, has a family, wants to move up to selling televisions, shift from foot to foot, 12 hours standing, 9am to 9pm, too long, scribble scenes for a play when no one is watching, quit before prom, but don’t forget evans department store
when i heard that George Winston died, i realized i had no one to tell, no one who would really understand how he transformed piano notes into snow, into darkened pine trees, into music of the winter solstice. transcendent, like time immemorial, i can still see my seventeen year-old self, not making a sound, just listening to Winston, that quiet focus, he taught me to be still, appreciate all that is.
her curfew midnight, i sprinted the summer streets of madrid. by metro and taxi, she, an hour away, then an hour back across the capital city. 16 years old, when i could run and sweat, 94 degrees dripping down my cheeks. it didn’t matter, because i always stood by the open window of the metro train, hot air drying everything except the pounding blood in my chest, and i hardly knew it, but this was love. arriving, eyes aglow, to stroll on an ancient moorish pathway, share a morsel of ice cream. 12am, taxi, underground train, back to carabanchel, the far reaches of madrileńo civilization. never a second thought that i would do it all over the next night.
Daniel W. Polk 