Geektastic Pentameter: Geek Poetry

It started with Shasta on Twitter,
so long since I’d heard it I couldn’t
remember just when I forgot it existed –

nostalgia for summer, antifreeze-green,
poured down over ice blunted
round in the floor of the cooler,
sipped for 10 at the top of the hour,
forced rest from the burning-eye water
at the pool in the wooded dead-end,
10 minutes from home,
a treat I looked forward to then.

It fizzes up into a lizard-brain itch
like memory mine for the moment
when I last saw the cat
(how long since she made her escape?)
or the missing necklace (back
at the hotel?) or the car key off the ring
(surely not thrown away)

launching an hours-long fret turning paper
and loveseat and rug in the search for the thing
I can’t place, can’t think of the last place it was.

And then I remember that I can’t remember
the last time our talk was anything other
than 900 miles bookended with fumble,
prediction and autocorrection,
sentences slipped in like sugar through sieve,
all interruptions and only betweens,

pennies one at a time down the well,
then waiting, waiting, counting
the seconds that ought to precede
click or splash, faint
acoustic announcement of how
far the drop to the end.

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My mind is too loud for this podcast,
though I’ve lashed it down like a tarp in a storm,
all I can hear is the flutter and flap
of the gusts at its corners, the billow
and crack as it flies up and fills, groaning
resistance of anchor and spike
as they give from the yank on the tether.

My mind is too loud for this audiobook
as worry squares off in the face of delight,
Sturm und Drang flanking joy and contentment,
calm routed out by a sorrow invented.
Scouts and spies sprint ahead of the story.
I’ve lost the gist once the cannons subside.

My mind is too loud for the music
downloaded this morning. I don’t
know the words, and I’ve just caught a chorus
too sad to repeat.
Clatter and din strike up their own rhythm
and counter the crests from outside.
A six-hour drive left to go, and I can’t
put the clamor aside for the lyric.

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