Returning is never quite what you hoped it would be

Sin City

To Our Lady

Miss Damned

my apologies

I was bored 

by your excess

all the punks hippies

travellers

resting easy

engaged with playstations

married with kids

and dogs

all doing the 

same old same old

in an infrastructure

of comfort and ease

the reasons that brought you

across lands and oceans

forgotten in the

crimson sofa's call

Our Lady

Miss Damned

I was bored

with the ease 

of your acceptance

my fault - I hope,

I suppose

anyway, my friends that

ran away from the 

straight and narrow

only to find it

some place else 

called home

with coke and e's and

trips and hash, jagermeister

running and running 

until we recognise

 nothing, and every thing

we left behind

the street cred called damage

doesn't change the fate

of what you ran from

for me - my apologies

Our Lady

I was bored

the Damned

Miss Damned

I'll return for a 

few days

now and again

just to say hi

to the families of

my used to be

friends

Reviews

[Einstein Noodle]

nope .. never the same .. even if familiar faces and streets are still around it is not the same .. high school days are golden .. friendship something regaled as more than family in importance and permanence ... even the heat from the sidewalks has changed ... sad but freeing experience says i! your "Miss Damned" intrigues me to no end ... sure relate to this my friend ... its a misty kind of remembrance .. my Da told me many years ago .. that friends will come and go .. that "You can never go back." (in just those words) and the Beatles would be a thing of the past in 10 yrs. (we actually had a $5 bet on that .. two out of three aint bad huh!? :)
E.

[gram linski]

thanks E, aye well your Da got the important parts right, lol, glad you could relate and enjoy,

[Einstein Noodle]

i think he did :))))))))))))))))))

[Eilis]

The lure of Sin City can’t be perpetually beautiful. Sooner or later we have to pass a mirror and see what we’ve actually become. And sin city doesn’t have to be a place of debauchery, it can be anyplace we run to to bury ourselves in something other.

Life glares at intervals and we’d like to deflect the glare. Soften the light, and let it fall as we’d like. But, just as Icarus discovered, we are not stronger or more beautiful than the sun. Its rays will eventually find a way to shine full on and melt the wax of our wing-construction.

I suppose the kicker here is that in running from something, we find a similar thing elsewhere and don’t really know where to run next. Complacency comes in many colors whether in suburbia or the crack house—we settle in. And we like our routine. An understanding of what the next day’s feeling will be.

I like the way the speaker sees the dichotomy and fights against it. But of course, it’s never a settled thing. The past and feeling haunt and we find our minds returning to the allure of Miss Damned or Sin City or wherever the mind drags us in its need. Could even be some more innocent thing that nevertheless stunts us. Or has its pull over every other thing.

The proposal is never settled. Seems like knowing/understanding this is both helpful and infuriating. And the call of old friends and other days is the siren on the rocks. Our hearts the bait out there on the boulder— caught between song and wave.

I don’t know. I know going back is never possible. But the past does call and lure. But we are never the same as when we last saw her.

Stirring poem, Gram. A certain rawness that unsettles and enlightens simultaneously.

[gram linski]

aye wise words, Eilis, there is an allure lure of the past maybe to fade the present a little, and hark back to better days with false memory implants

[Eilis]

Sometimes when I read your poems, I end up talking to/or about myself and seeing the truth of something not so easily defined. I was thinking about this poem after my initial comment and thinking maybe I’d gotten it wrong and that it was more of a positive note to self that the past only has the power we allow it. I’m not sure.

Nevertheless, I find a lot of meaning in your poems, which is why I end up saying a lot. Like facing the self and finding explanation. Not sure how to articulate that. But there it is. Whatever it’s worth

[gram linski]

means a lot, thanks, :)

[emmajoy]

How life alt e rs from then to now.!!! Scary. When little girl we went on holiday to a large house with ginormous tall jungley plants. Rem e mber forever til i was in my early twenties and went back
it was a three bed chalet with a long thin garden with steps... my jungle was just a neatly cut lawn, pr une d trees, same owners. T rue. Plus Never go back to see old friends in case you've had nips and tucks cos they'll see differences in YOU. shock/surprise you w ith their frown.s Applies to everyone.
anyone Nostalgia is of t en reality gone wrong Perhaps.

[gram linski]

haha, thanks emmajoy, aye you got that right, nice wee story, the memory does like to enhance experience , interesting style of prose, btw,

[emmajoy]

I do the be st I can! .

[Chris Shaw]

When I read you I thought never look back yet alone go back. It just rakes up the past and what has gone. Your Miss Dammed has multi meanings. A couple of months before my brother died he asked me to drive him back to our last childhood home. Quite a contrast from Sin City. detached house at the crossroads of a country lane, lined in conifers with a pub opposite. What better than that. We both sat and sat and neither of us could speak because all the memories of that happy place with our parents and siblings were just that. Memories and nothing more. It would have been better not to have gone. And then strangers parked in our drive and opened our front door. We were gone.

Chris

[gram linski]

ah, but you now have the memory of sitting with your brother, so you should have gone just for that, but I know what you mean, the sheen and sparkle of the streets have been muddied by life passing by and not wiping it's feet, lol, thanks Chris,