catching you
This poem is about identity and how we develop perceptions of ourselves. In relating the present to our history the wholeness of our identity seems to scuttle away.
By Marie Gordon
This isn’t the girl
Who jumped off her porch
With a plastic bag
For a parachute
Who with her brother
Downed a scope bottle
Barely suspecting
The consequences
She slept like a kid
The sun didn’t rise
Before she lay down
She didn’t check locks
I have left you now
I did leave you then
You are words and tales
Not my history
You trace rhetoric
Over smooth-skinned ears
That haven’t been pierced
But your words don’t spell
These words leave you out
Laying on the ground
After a high leap
From the porch shouting
You have lost volume
Given it over
Because I ruined
The words that we had
Like our paradise
And our red nightmares
The songs we danced to
I busted the tape
In thinking of you
I write you away
I write me away
Into breathless words
We sit on the porch
I stare at that ground
Parachute ready
My words won’t help you glide
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Hi Marie! Finally got around to checking out your website =) I really enjoy your poems- a lot of them mean something slightly different for me on second reading, which is pretty much my threshold for “good stuff”. You have your own unique style; I can definitely hear you speaking this poem as I read it =) Your intro statement to this one caught my eye because it is so insightful. I know it probably means something different to everyone who reads it, and to you, but this was my reaction: I had a kind of “life summary” conversation with a close friend last week, and I got the same feeling your poem tapped into, but I could not put it into words (maybe if I were an English major…). It was almost as if someone else had lived my memories. It was a very odd sensation. But I think you summed it up- what I wasn’t able to see was a sense of wholeness of self in relation to them, and that was very strange. I am in such a different place now than I ever imagined as a kid. I really wonder where 10 year old me went. The transition wasn’t exactly a gradual one. I wish I had more of a sense of groundedness with my memories, but instead they make me feel utterly disconnected from my past.
Thanks for sharing!
-Maureen