Рукописи не горят

Damn it all.
Some minor phrase
Some glint of eye
Some perfectly
inconsequential
gesture
And I'm gone.

Not Memory Lane, no.
Not for me is so tranquil a metaphor.

Desirée I should never have come

Instead I face memory's dark maw,
Some Calcuttan oubliette
In which, safeguarded by purple prose,
Those most poignant fragments of the past reside.
Here, like Alice, I fall.
Hands clenched, teeth grit.
That eternal paradox that so enlivens
The masochistic duality of repression and remembrance.

To flirt with rescue

Unlike Alice, there is nothing curious here.
Here all is familiar,
Achingly familiar.
Each shattered minim contains,
Like a personal portraitured hologram,
An infinite number of recursions.
The sound, the memory
The touch, the memory
The eyes, the memory.
The agony and the ecstasy
The horror and the weeping joys
The remembrance of scent,
Of sound and taste and touch
The senses did dutifully record
Each moment
Of You and I
Of Her and I
Of Him and I
And Her again

When one has no intention

Each one is a case for tears.
Each one is a case for laughter.
When we get down to cases
As I so often do
Perhaps we might have...
If we but could of...
Perchance...

So long as I remember that I am mad
I have the strength to live the lie that I am sane.

Of being saved

Would Pyrrhus
Had he been given world enough and time,
To reach his old age-
Would he have returned to Asculum
And searched for some sign
That there had been achievement?
(This I ask myself,
without much need of an answer).
It is a not a question of concern.
It is but a styling of pretense-
A falsehood said in hope of sounding deep.

And with a start, I remember that this is not the time
To wallow in my own self-loathing.
I have work to do,
Things to do,
Tasks to achieve.
And so I drag myself back into the real world,
The one less preferred,
Where you and her no longer are.

Please try to forgive me.

Sometimes I sing.
Sometimes I lose myself in the clustered words
The recurring lines
And simple themes
Of patter songs.
So I go on.
And patiently wait
For when the next trigger might return
My masochistic self
To faded past
and Better Days.

Ἂν ἔτι μίαν μάχην νικήσωμεν, ἀπολώλαμεν.

It's 'return' on Macs.

Judicious use
Of the enter key
Creates the illusion
of poetry.

Cold Concrete Floor

As I grow older
And my hearing starts to go
I find that more exchanges remind me of
Cigarette smoke.
Clouds of it.
A childhood in the legion,
Surrounded by the relics of the dead,
While, through grainy mic,
The auctioneer's booming voice
Sings out it's kinetic patter song.
And I sit there,
Uncomprehending
Trying to breathe.

Dem people from Jersey is brutes.

When I learned
They had killed off
Edith Bunker.
I wept.

And my last certainties
Vanished.
Like that other pink slipper.

Return to the Wasteland Pt. 2

I have returned to my place in the shadows.
I watch the band begin the beguine,
Note who has changed partners,
And who sits out a set.

But for a moment there, I once again
Was blessed enough to take another turn.
A stately waltz, it's steps close held,
Its undertones of eros more evident with every refrain.

I tried.
I really did.

But with every turn, with every pass I saw
At his place by the door,
The mocking grin of the Amaranthine Porter.
It was doomed, as I knew we would be
The moment the band-leader hefted his hand.
The music grew louder,
My steps faltered more,
The spectators voices a deafening roar.

It didn't matter.
As Mollari said,
I had forgotten how to dance.
Like good dancers,
We bore it till the end.
The music ended, and with his skeleton smile,
The Footman made his way through the floor
And to a special few
He gave them back their coats.

Again I was afraid.
And I was right to be.
Shattered by grief, and the madness of heartbreak,
I again found myself in that blighted wasteland.

But I am back now.
I recorded the dances, their partners, the songs and sets.
It is my job, I am a watcher.
Thus, I watch.

It will have to be enough.

Return to the Wasteland

Time has passed.
Wind has worn down the carbon scored stones.
The animals and worms have taken the dead,
And what riches were held within the Walls
Have been stripped.
I had hoped,
I had prayed,
To not return.
Why am I here again?
This open tomb,
Sixty-two square miles of fallen rock and mortar.
For one man's choice, a city died.
For one man's choice, a generation gone.
As for my choice...

I knew the consequences.
Yet I had the gall to hope.

More fool am I.