holes

[Mark A Becker]

holes

who am I to wonder why
and wave good bye
or where it is I’m going to?

something feels familiar
about some things I do
but most of all I wonder

who are you?

darling, I’m your man
please sit and hold my hand
I'll do what I can
but you won't remember

who I am

holes big as tomorrow
have begun to open up
the holes of yesterday
all closing down

I will still be here
holding you, my dear
but there will be nobody
that you know around

darling, I’m your man
please sit and hold my hand
I know who you are-
what we did, and I still do-

It's OK to ask me
who are you?

[TranquillityBase]

holes

who am I to wonder why
and wave good bye
or where it is I’m going to?

something feels familiar
about some things I do
but most of all I wonder

who are you?

darling, I’m your man
please sit and hold my hand
I'll do what I can
but you won't remember

who I am

holes big as tomorrow
have begun to open up
the holes of yesterday
all closing down

I will still be here
holding you, my dear
but there will be nobody
that you know around

darling, I’m your man
please sit and hold my hand
I know who you are-
what we did, and I still do-

It's OK to ask me
who are you?

Mark,

Very poignant.  Honestly can't see anything to change.

I was initially (and still am, to some extent) triggered by the "holes", the word I mean.  It didn't seem right for such an enormous topic, if that makes any sense.  But I haven't come up with a satisfying replacement.

Tim

______________________________________________and

it's very musical, i mean the rhythms are like a dying fall

[Wjames]

holes

who am I to wonder why
and wave good bye
or where it is I’m going to?  

something feels familiar
about some things I do
but most of all I wonder

who are you? 

darling, I’m your man
please sit and hold my hand
I'll do what I can
but you won't remember would this line be better as 'to show you'?

who I am

holes big as tomorrow
have begun to open up
the holes of yesterday
all closing down 

I will still be here
holding you, my dear 
but there will be nobody
that you know around The punctuation threw me a bit at first read (mainly between lines 2 and 3 of this stanza) - was a bit awkward to read naturally at first.

darling, I’m your man
please sit and hold my hand
I know who you are-
what we did, and I still do- Would this line be improved without 'I'? It would still have the same meaning as knowing what we did to one read, but would add another meaning as well about the present.

It's OK to ask me
who are you?

Hey Mark, I like this one, it's got a lot of feeling and like Tranquil said is very musical (I could easily imagine a melody around some sections and the poem being lyrics).

I also agree with 'holes' maybe not being the right word - unfortunately to my monkey brain the first thing that I think of when I hear the word holes is sexual organs (my porn addiction is showing here - although I think I'm probably in the majority).

[rowens]

Sarah Polley made a movie about this.

I used to think she was older, like Mena Suvari. But she's my age.


I'm not done, so shut up.

---

The poem works, all the way through.

The rhymes are sad.

---

Rhymes are keeping alive, at least for you.

---

The rhymes are keeping someone alive.

And that halfrhyme feels like slime from my mind.


Poetry

---

The rhymes are keeping someone alive.

And that halfrhyme feels like slime from my mind.


Poetry

---

The rhymes work in this poem.
Rhymes work with the message.

[TranquillityBase]

I also agree with 'holes' maybe not being the right word - unfortunately to my monkey brain the first thing that I think of when I hear the word holes is sexual organs (my porn addiction is showing here - although I think I'm probably in the majority).

That was my problem also, I was just to shy to say it out loud.  It's solid, Germanic word, but has devolved somehow.

I guess I wanted something more descriptive, like "canyons" or something.

TqB

[Valerie Please]

holes

who am I to wonder why
and wave good bye
or where it is I’m going to?

something feels familiar
about some things I do
but most of all I wonder

who are you?

darling, I’m your man
please sit and hold my hand
I'll do what I can
but you won't remember

who I am

holes big as tomorrow
have begun to open up
the holes of yesterday
all closing down

I will still be here
holding you, my dear
but there will be nobody
that you know around

darling, I’m your man
please sit and hold my hand
I know who you are-
what we did, and I still do-

It's OK to ask me
who are you?

I want to come here and disagree strongly with all of the people that want to pretty up the word holes . . . please don't change it. It is short, harsh, Germanic. It hits me just right for the experience of watching a loved one succumb to dementia . . .  plus "hole" translates into a lot of idioms that are useful and adjacent. . . hole in my heart, hole in my memory. Additionally, it has the feeling of something that could potentially begin and start small, but grow and grow, the way that diseases around memory loss tend to be progressive.

Guys, sometimes just a good plain word is best. Don't overthink this.

[Tiger the Lion]

holes

who am I to wonder why
and wave good bye
or where it is I’m going to?

something feels familiar
about some things I do
but most of all I wonder

who are you?

darling, I’m your man
please sit and hold my hand
I'll do what I can
but you won't remember

who I am

holes big as tomorrow
have begun to open up
the holes of yesterday
all closing down

I will still be here
holding you, my dear
but there will be nobody
that you know around

darling, I’m your man
please sit and hold my hand
I know who you are-
what we did, and I still do-

It's OK to ask me
who are you?

I want to come here and disagree strongly with all of the people that want to pretty up the word holes . . . please don't change it. It is short, harsh, Germanic. It hits me just right for the experience of watching a loved one succumb to dementia . . .  plus "hole" translates into a lot of idioms that are useful and adjacent. . . hole in my heart, hole in my memory. Additionally, it has the feeling of something that could potentially begin and start small, but grow and grow, the way that diseases around memory loss tend to be progressive.

Guys, sometimes just a good plain word is best. Don't overthink this.

I wholly agree with VP. Sometimes a seemingly generic word can carry an enormous weight.

[TranquillityBase]

 Don't overthink this.

Where the over-thinking came in was after I had the reaction to the word, when I tried to explain why it struck me as the wrong word.  I guess I did a poor job of it, but the initial reaction wasn't overthinking, just my honest feeling that it should be changed.

Dementia isn't one emptiness being replaced by another (not that I've experienced what the narrator is experiencing), but a world that makes sense cast into total confusion.  At least that's the best way I can imagine it.

[Valerie Please]

 Don't overthink this.

Where the over-thinking came in was after I had the reaction to the word, when I tried to explain why it struck me as the wrong word.  I guess I did a poor job of it, but the initial reaction wasn't overthinking, just my honest feeling that it should be changed.

Dementia isn't one emptiness being replaced by another (not that I've experienced what the narrator is experiencing), but a world that makes sense cast into total confusion.  At least that's the best way I can imagine it.

Look, this is all opinion and it's fine to disagree. It probably speaks to the quality of the poem that we are invested enough to disagree . . . it sounds like maybe you have your own poem in there? I wouldn't mind reading that if it ever came out.

[Mark A Becker]

Thanks for all of your comments folks, especially the recognition of the 'musical' nature of this one.  I sang it more than wrote it, if that makes sense. 

While not autobiographical, it does incorporate real-life observations I have made.

Use of the word 'holes' is quite intentional, since it has numerous meanings, and that single word was the 'seed' for this one.

Alzheimers is a particularly cruel disease. 

Thanks again,
Mark


ps. and yes, rowens, I am aware of the Sarah Polley film "Away From Her".  Thanks for mentioning that.

[rowens]

Sarah Polley and Mena Suvari are both older than me. I had a hole twice in my life about Sarah Polley being a lot older and her being the exact same age.

I also miss the people who use to walk the road, there were two men and a woman. They weren't together. They thought they knew people, they'd come to you and start talking about things you didn't know. They'd come in and sit on the couch if you left the door unlocked.

Now we have machines to do our memories and socializing and loving for us.

I miss the character days around here.

[Mark A Becker]

Now we have machines to do our memories and socializing and loving for us.

I miss the character days around here.

Hey rowens-
C'mon man- machines only do what we allow them to do.  I am way more interested in living, breathing people of all types, especially those trying to make sense of this one chance we get at it.  Even the ones I don't agree with (makes it more fun). There are a whole lot of us out here, just muddling through. And the older I get, the younger and more beautiful people have become. That means YOU, too.

[rowens]

This used to be a wandering countryside. It's coming more and more to resemble a police state. The spirit of place, of land, is still here. It's buried under the rubble of progress. That's how spirits become ghosts. And how people go from enjoying the pastoral and the folkloric to the science fiction atmospheres.
Technology changes metaphors, and so changes people.
The AI works through people, like people work through nature.
Amazon tells you want to get, YouTube tells you how to use it.
And addiction to buying things and constructing things, and the fear-mongering of the media, has my neighborhood a deforested area of fences and cameras and lights. Neighbors fenced off, as is nature. Stars blocked off by lights. Everything recorded by cameras, and everybody looking at each other with suspicion.
Fear and paranoia treated with drugs. Social Media and Video Games distracting from the outdoors which is torn away and fenced off.
A landfill on one side, buying all the land and homes, a new casino on the other, right next to the liquor store and the vape shop.


The world changes and the human changes. The mind and the landscape and the seasons change together. And the entire body and its environment is the mind. What I described above is paradise for some people. Out with the old, giving things a new chance, new experiences.

For me, that's a metaphor of the mind decaying, which is a new experience. Forgetting, entering a new experience of experience. Sad for those who feel left behind. But is the New Decay less for that?


I can wander a rustic hayseed. Now I can roam like Mad Max in a new environment, cracked but not shattered. Nostalgic but not bled dry.


Is Decay and Decade linked etymologically? The late 1980s was certainly a Decadent time. And the first four years of the 1990s was the tackiest period in fashion history.

See, there are Holes everywhere, like the black squares on the Mason's floorboards. The Found Footage movies and the Caught on Camera ghost stories make the big bucks. The old is here, waiting. 


From the cracks in my mind there are lights in colors out of connection to anything relevant. No less here for all that.

[Bunx]

holes

who am I to wonder why
and wave good bye
or where it is I’m going to?

something feels familiar
about some things I do
but most of all I wonder

who are you?

darling, I’m your man
please sit and hold my hand
I'll do what I can
but you won't remember

who I am

holes big as tomorrow
have begun to open up
the holes of yesterday
all closing down

I will still be here
holding you, my dear
but there will be nobody
that you know around

darling, I’m your man
please sit and hold my hand
I know who you are-
what we did, and I still do-

It's OK to ask me
who are you?

At first I didn't see this as a decay poem with a suggest memory loss theme. I thought of it as
1. folks living in the past, they might be in different places but in their mind they are define defined by old memories.
2. the nature of modern relationships / dating culture, I feel like so often people serve non-traditional and roles in peoples / partners life that often lack a title or definition. Thus causing leaving a lack of role or n this case holes in meaning in peoples life.

After reading the comments I saw folks suggesting memory loss, and the nature of love (which makes more sense then my above thought)
Awesome poem and subject matter! At any rate I like poems that folks can apply within their own experience or social context

thanks for the read