‘Globalization Detritus’

Quivering pedal steel
Green-winged dove
Dilapidated keyboards from an ancient Commodore 64
Hendricks and tonic with a twist
Failed expectations
Dinner guests arriving early
Maasai warrior with 3rd gen. iPhone
Heavily-marketed ISIS You Tubes
Traffic oceans on the 101 North
Impossible bouts of insomnia
Pre-planned pregnancies
Unfortunate haircuts
Hammond organs
Cosmologist at his wit’s end
Teleological arguments
Well-dressed cocktail waitress
Burlesque dancer, gone mad
Severed head
Fried soundboard, somehow salvaged
Facebook post, widely misinterpreted
Uber-driver, overly chatty
Ferguson protestor, hands up
Former Adobe Flash specialist, drinking absinthe
Greek teenager, picketing her joblessness
Exhaustive analysis of post post-modern performance
Low tide on Carcavelos beach
Non-projected mommy issues
Blue-red ink
Memory of childhood innocence, 2nd grade
Global warming tendencies
Cackled conspiracy theories
Existential loneliness
Abbastanza bene!
Platform shoes for the bassist.

 

COMMENT

‘I wrote this piece while standing in front of the stage at The El Rey Theater in Los Angeles.  It was the night of my birthday, and I was among friends listening to the beautiful experimental sounds of Daniel Lanois. As I scribbled in my notebook from within the flood of music, the three pages of items I listed out were a snapshot of immediacy.  You could say it was my response to first hearing Daniel Lanois, reflecting some of the disparate melodies.  You could also say it was a portraiture of the world at that specific moment–and my world–as one thinks of it on her birthday, amidst friends.

I submitted this list poem for the Open Workshop “This List Cause” – and received excellent feedback, not least of which was the suggestion to remove subtle elements that had inserted the narrator’s voice.  This poem was the first I’d submitted for critique in more than 15 years, and in many ways it represents a return to poetry for me.’