story idea: poem to story

I wrote a poem a year or so ago about a young woman who buys some second-hand records, including The Monkees' "Daydream Believer." I'm thinking of re-working it as a story featuring Bobbi Kirsch, who appears in a short story about a boy getting hurt at a playground. She was 12 in the story, which was set in 1966, so she'd be at the perfect age for falling in love with the band. Or I could flash-forward Bobbi to the present, where she'd be in her mid-'60s. In either case, the poem would need to be drastically reworked. This may not be a good idea. (and it may not be a good poem!) We shall see.

Here's the poem:

Daddy’s Home

She really liked The Monkees, so she bought an old turntable

and spent good money—too much, she thought—

on a stack of 45s she’d picked up here and there 

at yard sales, flea markets, open-door garages 

with a few dejected hopefuls milling.

But “Daydream Believer” is the saddest happy song—

she was disappointed when she saw them goofing through it 

on a YouTube video, the old TV show insisting they were cute, could be nothing else—

and the comments blathered on about 

how much they smile as they sing, such a way to make the whole day happy.

“Daydream Believer,” she knew, is tougher than that,

its early-morning melancholy pressing its strained face against the cheerful glass—

and muffled as it was, through that upbeat tempo you could hear 

the wish to not be disappointed, 

to greet the day despite the cold and stinging shaving razor, 

to ignore the high school Homecoming photo on the stairs as you go down 

to face the bills, always due.

She’d never been a Homecoming Queen, far from it—

back then she rose in indignation above 

that rah-rah bullshit and scorned their pep and perfect hair 

and all the other creepy clichés of popularity—

but hoe-lee shit that song changed it all, and made her cry for them, 

years past the prom and trying just like her to get it right 

and finally know how much we really need.

So she listened in sympathy and solace, 

none of them with dollar one to spend.

But in the 45s a stranger waited: “Daddy’s Home” by Shep and the Limelites.

The song was old-timey—doo-wop, but she wouldn’t know—

like something you’d hear playing ironically in a postapocalyptic video game.

She also didn’t know that Daddy wasn’t a Daddy, 

he’d been stationed somewhere wearing a uniform like Elvis, making the girls cry—

Well, at least that one girl in the song;

but it’s all right, Daddy’s home to stay.

She also didn’t know that James “Shep” Sheppard had written

“A Thousand Miles Away” for another label 

and they sued his new label because the two songs were practically one song 

and it ruined him, more or less; 

then in 1970 he was murdered.

She did know that the song had its own sadness:

something in the melody, something in his voice told her 

he wasn’t home to stay.

Wait; was Davey Jones lying too? 

Were the daydream believer and the Homecoming Queen not happy amid their sadness?

Had she been betrayed by “the insidious mastery of song”?

Should she lift the needle and ceremoniously crack both records in two—

No, all of them!— 

and let down her hair, free it from the bun she affected, wipe that stupid lipstick smile off your face—

face it, you’re 24 and all that shit might as well be on Mars—

and, just like Marx sez,  face with sober senses her real conditions of life?

But somewhere a great cliff rose, its sheer face falling into the mist of a rocky river.

She stood at its edge like The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 
let the needle drop, and sang it like a Monkee.