Woodview Avenue 1960

[TranquillityBase]

Sorry Tim-
I just couldn't keep myself from the re-write. Perhaps the way I re-worked this piece will help in some way, that is, if you're still intersted in moving this one forward.  I know it's damn near impossible to recreate scenes from so long ago, but... :

We walked cool asphalt at twilight
without renouncing our sins, leading us
not into temptation on summer nights,
nor delivering us from evil
rumors of a ex-con with a butcher knife.

Behind a jumble of decrepit rabbit hutches
was a root-wrecked wall in our backyard
that protected us from spies creeping down the hillside.
A tree snake sometimes climbed through the cedar
but offered no promises of knowledge, or power.

We had lived here forever, and no neighbors
knew us for what we were.  We heard country
and western dialed into radios in the distance, 
saw static that danced on black and white TVs-
imagined that the patterns would tell us it’s time:

time to duck and cover, or die in the Alamo,
burn grandma's tattered Bible, then piss
on the flames. This was our home,
but "progress" has rejected us as liars. Memories
now run over, on a street that no longer exists.

Hi Mark,

No need to apologize.  A re-write helps me see what others are seeing in the poem.  It's a more intense critique.  At first I was taken aback by your "duck and cover, or die in the Alamo" but it sunk in after a few minutes.  Also liked "We heard country/and western dialed into radios".  And I like the last lines.

Perhaps I will revisit this one this weekend.  Haven't put in any writing time since i wrote it initially.  Time to put fingers to a keyboard again.

Tim