Rewind/Fast Forward/Eject

is the title of a soca song
I love to sing
a soca song I love to sing
from an album
released in 1994
released in 1994 on vinyl CD
and cassette
in 1994 when those words
made sense
to a cassette owner
a cassette tape owner
someone who owned and listened to
cassettes
someone who fell in love with a song
and rewound it and replayed it
until it broke
and had to be discarded
had to be ejected and tossed away

less than a generation from now
no one will understand this song
the way a cassette owner understood it
watching the tape gather on the left hand reel
thinking is that far enough?
trying to interpret high speed backwards noise
hitting play to see if it was far enough
hitting rewind and fast forward
and play
and then one last rewind
to position the tape
right at the beginning
of the wanted song
hitting eject when the time came
to change 
reluctantly
to another song

it wasn’t just about 
hitting repeat
or choosing a track number
love
and obsession used to be
analog processes
that took time and precision
took attention and 
esoteric understanding
of what little you could see and hear
how to read subtleties
how to fall back satisfied and then
how to move on

love was a soca song
played endlessly 
over and over
beginning to end to beginning again
until it was over
until it was over
until it was at last over and done