30 Moments Inside A Fantasy

[M]

Denise,

What is the Price for Freedom is superb. Exploring the questions that we don't like to ask ourselves, but through the connection to another artist that you admire, finding a link there, and asking those questions of them so that you don't feel quite so alone in asking them of yourself. Strong piece.

Broken is visceral and raw. The end is quite good, the re-imagining of reality, having to imagine being comforted by your mother. Oof. Yeah, wine or not, that was definitely a good idea, and you certainly have a poem there.

M.

[lauriene]

These are all great, very enjoyable. Need, in particular, stood out to me. The deeper longing for connection that writing brings and that only writers understand is a concept worth exploring. Would you still write if you knew no one would ever read it? For me, the answer is you bet! I wondered if the title would be better as Longing. Good stuff, looking forward to the rest of your month worth of poems

[DeniseD]

Thanks everyone, Much appreciated. Not quite a poem yet but I'm tired... I don't know what those ** are, it only happens when I use my Mac.

Freedom -- Is It Worth the Cost?

Do you have a great love? A soul connection so deep, you can’t free yourself from it
even if you want to? I think you do because after your second divorce,
you stopped writing love songs, and it’s been decades.

I have a love like that, a love with a bond so strong it heals its own cracks.
A love I held for 50 years — despite his heroin addiction, despite his prison sentence,
for vehicular homicide, despite my intractable grief and guilt,
despite the fact that we are both married to other people.

When we’re together we sit facing each other, hands at our sides,
foreheads touching. Through that thin layer of skin, we feel each other’s
torment, regret, passion, our need for tenderness, for forgiveness.

Neither of us has the strength to stop what’s happening. It’s a blending of energy,
atoms attracting atoms. Magnets that have no choice but to come together.
It was about letting light into the place inside me that holds a dead bird,
a place my husband refused to go. When we’re together,
I feel light enough to walk through walls. There is no remorse, no guilt, no shame.

What kind of person does that make me?

[DeniseD]

What Holds You Captive?

When I was 29, my husband surprised me*with tickets to your concert in Boston. It’s a good thing he can’t read minds because things weren’t good between us and the love of my life was in rehab, so I spent lots of nights thinking about you and I having sex on the back of a motorcycle, in the tall grass at a park, on top of a pool table. Handcuffs might have been involved once or twice.

As you went through your set (which was fantastic) I wondered, is fame what you wanted? Would you rather be laying on a float in your pool letting your first child (who was born the same day as my third) jump in and splash you? Would you pretend to be mad when the cold water hits your face? Would that giggle be the most beautiful sound you ever heard?

I’m going to regret sharing this with you because these thoughts make you real and me really weird — a stalker of another person’s possible thoughts. But damn, I want to know what it is you long for. To wake up every morning with the woman you can’t live without? To fall asleep in her arms while you weep over the terrible thing you’ve done? I don’t think — no; I hope the answer isn’t fame because if you turn out to be an asshole, which is quite possible, I won’t be able to handle it and without you, I’m alone.

[DeniseD]

You Should Thank Me

Remember the man you were before
genetics, gravity and pasta did their damage?
Before you had to drop your songs
a key or two?

Well, I do, but I still love you.

Don’t feel bad about the hair,
it’s not your fault. My part keeps
widening, like my grandma’s and my mom’s.
And women can’t embrace
hair loss like men can.

I don’t know what you look like naked
and I really don’t want to.
I’ve seen men your age undressed
and I know for a fact gravity
affects the goods.

You’re not the only one who likes
pretty young things. I wouldn’t mind
a peek at the 40-something leading man
in the soap opera I’ve been watching
since this quarantine.

I could be wrong. Maybe you were lucky.
like I was lucky with the boobs. Because,
as a young woman, I was a knotty pine board.
I wasn’t happy about it then, but now I kinda like
the fact that they are still where they should be.

The pasta, on the other hand, is your fault. Mine too,
I’m not what I used to be either. I just threw out
all of my size sixes, eights, and tens, even
a few form fitting twelves. Okay, not twelves,
they were fourteens. This plague has opened
my eyes to truths about myself
I was reluctant to see.

Any way, the oldest member of my writing
group is my mother’s age. She had to close her
business because of the pandemic
so she’s*been spending her time watching
your videos on YouTube. She sent me a text
this morning and said you chose
the perfect rockstar.

Because I need your music to write,
and because I’m home all day, I’ve been playing
it nonstop. My husband, who was never a fan
said, he’s better than I gave him credit for.

And my 8-year-old granddaughter,
who is the same age as one of your kids,
uses your music in her gymnastics routines.
And her 10-year-old sister sings your songs
to her friends on Skype. They think it’s cool
that a grandpa who looks like theirs (ha)
can still rock it.

So, be grateful. In a little town
in Litchfield County, Connecticut,
you are famous all over again.

I heard you’re touring this year.
Maybe when it’s safe to disappear
into a crowd, I’ll buy a ticket.

You can be the young man just learning
to weave the magic of fantasies
and I’ll be the gushing young girl
with a turquoise feather in her long dark hair.

[JFN]

Denise, Need is a great moment of realisation and deep questioning. From the wondering to the end speaks more of empathetic love rather than a simplistic physical attraction. Really well worked.

What Is The Price For Freedom gives an explanation as to how N's obsession began. It also explains why N begins to feel that empathy, the burying and resurfacing of past trauma that it seems is so crucial for a lot of artists. The single fine detail about the raspberries stands out well, being so specific.

Broken is brutal and exceptionally powerful. The tone forces me to read quickly, almost frantically, until that calm and measured pause towards the close. Excellent work.

So we see a further element of the story with Freedom - Is It Worth the Cost, with N finding solace and redemption in an extra-marital relationship. I like the description of this connection as something uncontrollable and unstoppable, yet the image of foreheads touching is very precise and controlled. The final question following the confession of no remorse or guilt indicates the perception that there should be some.

What Holds You Captive interests me as it seems that the one man who is attempting to please her is the one she doesn't love. There's the classic 'bad boy' element going on. Again you have that pause and shift at the close; she knows her rockstar is an asshole deep down, just like her lover in rehab, but she doesn't want to believe it.

There seems to be some realisation towards the close of You Should Thank Me, and a lot of quiet love when speaking about the grandchildren. It brings it back into that fantasy realm.

Keep them coming,

John

[DeniseD]

Thanks, John.

This is getting hard to do without giving away my muse (ha).

Veil

The veil between here and there
is thin, If you know the magic
word you can pass right through.
I remember it. If you don't,
it's okay, you can still catch glimpses
of it now and then. You might hear
a dead relative's voice call your name,
or smell your mother's perfume
long after she passed, or see a sparkle
of light in the night.

All you have to do is close your eyes
and wait for the warm colors.
When you feel them, don't fight,
just let them transport you. It's not scary.
You've been there before, my friend from another time.
That's where you told me you love to be in love.
That's how I know something haunts you.

I wish I didn't feel this overwhelming need
to talk to you about this. I hate sensing your pain.
I hate that dead people hover around me.
I hate being Dear Fucking Abby. But, for you
I'll make an exception. And, I'm not doing it
because you're famous. I'm doing it because
it's what I agreed to do for you before
we were born. Just like you agreed to write
those life-saving songs for me.

So, here I am. Consider me an imaginary friend
who won't judge whatever terrible things
you may have done, or think you may have done.
A friend who won't expect anything from you
except honesty, and that's for your benefit,
not mine.

Your first instinct is going to be "this woman
is fucking crazy." But think about it a while,
you'll see I'm right.

If you're brave enough, write me a song.
You'll be surprised how much
of yourself you're willing to dish to a stranger.

[Dunc]

Denise

Freedom ─ 'torment, regret, passion, ... tenderness' and what I guess would be called 'wavelength', that strange shared understanding of how to see the world. Though I don't think N can disavow guilt if N asks the essentially defensive question in the last line. Strongly drawn picture.

You Should Thank Me has the feeling of a frank, level-toned, sober meditation about self in particular, distant other as foil. Clever use of the old idol, as it were.

Veil and now the same kind of meditation and tone are applied to the relationship with the old idol, his role in N's mind at this time, the nature of the bond as N imagines it.

A curious but fascinating dynamic to your thread.

Regards / Dunc

[DeniseD]

Thanks Dunc!

Migration

Last night I dreamed you were hovering above me.
I knew it was you even though you were mostly particles
and light. You touched my lips with your index finger.
Remember me, you said as you fed me a cracker.
I had to google you to make sure
you didn't die.

Unable to fall back asleep, I poured myself a glass of wine.
When I took the last sip, I understood
it wasn't you at all, it was the bird I killed,
gifting me forgiveness.

But the part of me that knows the truth
about the humming bird -- who because of me,
started her migration back to the light
before she got a chance to spread her wings --
is buried so deep I can't find her.

I can't stop her from twisting
my thoughts until all I hear is
this is my body which was given for you.

I pour myself another glass of wine.

[DeniseD]

Lost In The Light

Did you ever wish you were dead? I think you have, I hear it in your music. The first time I wanted to die I was a patient at Mt. Sinai Hospital. I was sitting in the corner of the room, pulling my hair out, screaming as loud as I could. My father tried to talk me down but I wouldn’t stop so he slapped me hard across the face. I can still feel the sting on my cheek. What I needed was for him to be Daddy, the man who could fix anything, even a dead bird. The nurse put something in my IV and in seconds I was outside the confines of my body, floating on ribbons of light. It was incredible, and for a split second I heard the light say you deserve to live. But, I didn't believe it. if I could have, I would have stayed lost in fantastic forever. I was devastated when I woke up in my body.

[Sorella]

Denise,
This point is where I fluff backwards, starting with the latest!
Seems more useful, as we proceed through our marathon together.
Lost in the Light is a prose poem with great flow and atmosphere.

Migration: a fascinating dream, and the roots of that dream, which N finds
with a glass of wine, then vaguely loses in another dreamlike state.

Veil - again a strangely thrilling mood here, it seems to be written to
a dead song lyricist/artist, intriguing stuff!
If you're brave enough, write me a song.
You'll be surprised how much
of yourself you're willing to dish to a stranger.

Love that ending, and the idea of being Dear Abby to the dead.

Will be back, cool and different writing, as I remember from you.

Sorella

[Gabrielle]

Denise, thank you for sharing this very powerful and difficult exploration. So much safer to keep objects of desire at a distance, when you've experienced so much pain in things that are meant to be loving. Also that somehow we can feel kinship with other artists through their work, even if you never meet each other. It is a very strange world.
Warm thoughts,
Gabriele

[Mimic_Octopus]

I love this collection, Denise. The near-religious worship of this singer, the unseen silhouette on the stage - it's such a cool framework for NaPo.

I love Migration and Lost in the Light because there's an element of vertigo in both. The speaker is considering death - both that of the idol and that of themselves, and an intertwining of the two. I really like that you're mixing free verse with prose poetry too - with such a tight concept, switching up the shape and speed and rhythm of the components builds the body beautifully.

PS: My guess is Bruce Springsteen

[alondra]

Hi Denise - I like the idea of that "tiny sliver of soul" and the "missing atoms." It´s the duty of a poet to see beyond; otherwise, he´s rather pedestrian.

[DeniseD]

Thanks Sorella, Gabrielle, Mimic-Octopus and Alondra. Much appreciated.