time traveling

time traveling 



I talked 

so much about poetry

that you didn’t see me 

spill half my beer on my shirt sleeve,

a shuffleboard table

and your arm 

against mine,

do you remember 

that light

in the coffee shop

when you took the picture

of what would become 

the next 8 months your life? 

Fast forward through 

a few more,

rewind back to one

that we should do over again

and

how long has it been?

Sixty seconds

for a hand 

to make its trip

around the moon,

but how long

would it take

for me to remember every date 

I’ve had with you?

Compartmentalization

is a great way 

to never be fully whole,

a Holiday season:

Thanksgiving

and work in between until Christmas;

to have a piece of pie

is to take a place on the chart,

life subdivided by time,

days delegated 

to people, places, things,

but if each one stands independently on the calendar

today

doesn’t connect with tomorrow 

or yesterday.

I’ll bite my lip

when I think about our trip downtown

and the homemade outside gym,

two dumbbell weights 

from my house to the car,

but as I carried them 

to the Grant Park grass

they weren't as heavy

as my heart

trying to receive your jumpstart.

Go back to when 

this all first began,

how much of your history

was built into our starting line,

the sound of a starter’s pistol

and BAM!

An eight hour drive, 

a movie in theaters,

“I’ll see you next weekend.”

A man full of dreams

is what you’re attracted to,

but if I never wake up

will that become a nightmare

to you?

It’s as if

I’ve been here before,

“They don’t allow cameras in this park.”

“Why?” you asked.

“I think that it’s because,” I said.

“They don’t want us to record

how much things change.”

A lapse in judgement

to believe

that I could have you

and still stay the same old me,

experiments 

are about a hypothesis,

place two things together

in the proper environment

and they become one,

“Want to talk about it?”

“That means,” I say.

“I’ll have to admit something.”

“What do you mean?”

“I still limp a bit,

when I’m on my own.”

Dan Parks