I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

And this is the slowdown. The Slow down.

During a recent visit to the Oregon coast, I sat in the glow of the biggest television

I ever sent eyes upon.

My hosts lodged me in a beautiful all-glass home

that overlooked a bluff. By day I watched the Great Pacific

churn. Then at night I watched a series of concerts by artists from my youth, the Cure, Depeche Mode, Soul to Soul, Fishbone, Loose Ends, Jay-Z.

In the dark, the music transported me to rhythms from another life.

It called up long ago emotional geographies. How is it that songs and poems express so accurately our states of being?

Depeche Mode's industrial clanging and darkly romantic lyrics captured the edges of me, as did

loose-ends lush synth-laced chords.

Today's poem explores the depths of its speaker

by applying the lyrics of an iconic artist

who gets that indomitable spirit of smart independent women.

Never did say so by Karyedad Morrow Grunlier.

After Dolly Parton's to Daddy.

We jumped a red eye to France to celebrate a decade of marriage, and I prayed to love him as much as I loved Paris.

I willed myself to shine like the sand through the clock at the Jose to stop at least once a day and

kiss him along the champselise. I willed my body to unfurl, like an accordion in his hands to murmur and bellow the song of

Lamare.

But no matter how I unrealed the film strip of the we I willed us to be, his face remained

obscured in every image.

...