Part Twenty Two - Two À la recherche du temps perdu

I have worn you like outdated pearls. Waiting for a bygone era
somewhere in between a rainy-day cab ride in New York City
and the Bogart good-bye where we’ll always have Paris.

I have dressed in sequined gowns, gloved hands to elbows,
waiting for your invitation. I have walked miles drunk in high heels
through cracked crevices of sidewalks we once sweet-hearted,
passed dark hours in parks alone until I got home.

No beacon light, no new messages.

I have packed you in boxes with old trophies,
yearbooks, bad poetry and various versions
of my name in graffiti art. I still own the Led Zeppelin cassettes
you made me when the box set came out.
I still remember how you rewound
“II” by hand with a pencil so I could hear
“Thank you” in music class in 9th grade.

I have worn you around my wrist like a watch
that infinitely loses time and because I cannot afford to have it fixed,
I am forced to adjust to lateness or still hours
in which time continues forward somewhere you are
afforded continuous motion;

While I lie still forever lamenting all the measurements lost.

Reviews

[Devons]

This is rather fine. I don't think one could begin a poem better than this; the first stanza establishes the piece brilliantly, and is an image-laden draw. Whenever I read anything I am always endeared to it by something which stands out, and even in the most conventionally-told tale one small piece of 'purple prose' transcends the rest and makes the whole memorable. Notwithstanding, there is more than one part of this poem which has that kind of charm. For example, so much pathetic sadness and forlorn hope is expressed by..
"No beacon light, no new messages."
...that the sentiment echoes throughout the ages of lost love affairs.
The imagery in this piece is like a collection of dusty nostalgic artefacts that reach out their memory in vain from the past, never to be recaptured. And the references to Time in the final stanza poignantly encapsulate that feeling of being left behind with them.
An elegantly delicate piece of writing which beguiles.

PS. Personally I think the penultimate stanza could be refined by removing the 4th line. And I don't think the complicated title of the poem does it justice.

[W.k.kortas]

It would be a worthy entry in a Summarizing Proust competition. It's wistful without wandering off into the saccharine or cloying, and the repetition is just so, not overdone at all. The pacing and rhythm is top-shelf. Proust meets Holly Golightly?

[NoneOfYourBusiness akaK..]

this is felt~ you dress the reader in your poem until the line is blurred between writer and audience~ beautiful doesn't even begin to cover it~

[Ed Hart]

ah, a good poem