The Lost Tribe (ver. 3)

[TranquillityBase]

I prefer the new version to the old one. There is a sense, with the sentences that go "A is B, C is D, E is F", that everything is simultaneously fragmented and whole, and the way the last stanza is broken up in the new version, as well as the way by which the last two stanzas are not directly connected with an "And" or a "So", reinforce this. Going forward, I'd suggest not using any other punctuation than what you're already using -- commas and periods -- so that, visually, the idea of "fragmented and whole" is reinforced, with none of the phrases being too far separated from the others. That said, and I suspect these are just typos, you seem to be missing a few marks:

The Lost Tribe

I remember you all [period or comma or, since the mark is just as narrow on the page, colon]
Loris, editor and poet, a bear of a man,
Regie, queen of a love hard as diamond, [while not your original sense, I concur with an earlier reviewer, that there should be a comma between "love" and "hard", or else you may have to explain in the text why "Regie" is singled out]
Paul, Vietnam Vet, playwright on a goof,
Margaret, sad madonna, love-sick,
who I dreamt about last night.

The Library was in unexplained darkness,
we were kissing,
I was so goddamned young [comma at the end. Also, and this I ask as a general reader rather than as a critic, but is this the only reference-to-a-song in this stanza? Because, if that isn't the case, then this is the only one I caught xD]
I mistook months for lifetimes.

Waking, I put on Patti Smith,
tracing your faces, hearing your voices,
replaying moments that made us a tribe
lost in the hieroglyphs of youth.

I resurrect the anguish and laughter
scattered and outlawed by time
gathered again in my mind.

A somewhat Johnsonian note: stanza three, "tracing your faces, hearing your voices, replaying moments" is a bit disunited in terms of imagery, and in a way that speaks less of the poem than it suggests new possibilities for reading. "replaying moments" isn't strictly aural, but with "Patti Smith" and "hearing your voices" it's surely aural, leaving "tracing your faces" isolated as the only visual metaphor in that brief list. Maybe something that involves "groove" or "beat"?

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But yeah, overall, that whole "fragmented but whole", lived-through-the-now-vanished-CBGB angle is felt. I'm left wondering if "Loris", "Regie", "Paul", and "Margaret" are people I might actually know, too, like Lester or Greil or Robert or Ellen or "Patti Smith".

Thanks very much for this enlightening critique.  I've posted a new version, which I hope doesn't ruin what you like about the previous version, but addresses things that both you and Bryn noted.  Trying to do justice to the subjects, but also keep the poem from expanding.

I can't really think of any other group in my life who was so much like a family, if short-lived one (about 5 years), and had such a lasting impact on me.  Thus, "a tribe", almost like a paradise that I want to return to, like the Plains Indian Native American prophets who promised the return of the buffalo and their way of life.

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No wasn't using Patti Smith words on purpose, so that kind of slipped through, but I think it belongs.