their stories me to haunt
with the language they once used
imprinting their fossil shapes on my restless retina.
I wanted to explode time
and delve among its layers
so it would gag me with its guilt
Bind me in its unrequited urges.
It’s just a heat on the air
with all the rest of entropy after all
just part of stuff that happens.
I close my eyes
and your words make those pictures
on my mind; your actions swim into
and inform mine.
You have me speak in strange voices.
2
I was born into that shape
that my ego disguises
so I could escape disclosure . . .
But I breathe the past and it frees me
All it craves of me is one more blank page.
And they came to name the fine streets
Twixt the horse lanes and hedge rows
Where the sons of a proud nation
Take the ladies to make their families
In the gentle good morrow.
Where the sun now set
And the English made their southern echo
Which the times would overtake
The Felix could not hold.