Plaza Pink and Blue
1.
No escape
wanting not to hide
out
in the open plaza
where you can grab me
upside down
shaking me
fizzing like a bottle of Pepsi
2.
I am deserted
most of the week
except Saturday night
reading
your mind
to a crowd
slow dancing
into the hot of the cold
3.
April nerves flexing
everyone with unwanted names
and losing weight where they want
showing off once in their life
so sad
we all fall down
eventually on our knees
bleeding kneecaps
4.
Our mothers crying
as to what
we have become
in the plaza underneath heaven
great songs of remorse
violins screeching
faces swelling into salty tear bags
popped eardrums
5.
Lonely horizon
lined with old street lamps
flames
snakes wiggling
up our naked legs
stamping our heels
to each
our rhythm
6.
Daddy finding us
saving us
with an old fashioned spanking
leading us home
where all the streets
have windows lit
with grandma
hugging us back to purity.
The narrator has a remarkable light touch, even surreal, they do not strain
to take us readers along on this journey. It has the classic spanking, and
turned upside down like a fizzed bottle of cola, as if we are brought back
to a time of nostalgic yet sad reminiscence. The observations may be
of a skateboarder in a plaza and that’s the suggestion leading us to bleeding
knees. The father is the story verse may have been working many hours in the
week, not paying any mind to the narrator. It takes the reader to a universal place
based on their own experience of youth, the angst that was faced, and the necessity
to move out away from the nest. The mother wishes for the traditional path.
Not sure if the hallucinogenic snakes rising up snare their rebellious subject.
Grandmother is the hug giver of purity away from the forces of the world.
That’s how I followed along with the plain, yet wonderfully quirky imagery that
leads you to your own conclusion. Is a poem ever less than ambiguous as we
recognize the ambition of tone and making.