History for sale

History is a difficult reality,

because it existed and is remembered in

simple fragments and usually

out of sync.

 

We write it down,

we debate about it

and we pretend to understand it.

 

In reality,

we are making up fictions

that loosely fit the facts,

but rarely even do that.

 

I can tell you what I walked in on

or whose heart I broke

and how bad of a man I was

but I can never show it to you.

 

I can also never show you the tender things

and how good I was to lay besides

and the way I hung on every word,

cared about even the smallest details.

 

History is always lost

whether it’s kept orally or written

and we pretend differently to employ scholars

but we are all rasping at straws and ghosts

even in the best of times.

the scissors of time

The scissors of time have tried to take their toll on you, but you're resilient. That was one thing that should never be forgotten, you never gave up on your life. The slash marks were stories, and the scars brought thoughts of you being your father's daughter.

It was never easy for us after we 'earned' a title. You acting your age and me acting twenty years too old. We knew life, for us, was a matter of time. We had our window. It will never permanently close, but it might never open again.

We were wrong to each other, but not in some deep, methodical way. In the stupid, easy way, where the audience screams out for us to act better, but we wink at them. There was never any audience, and we were less clever than we thought.

The end of the track should have hit before we made a home, but the minecart found different rails laced with the same problems. "Us" is a story in two acts, neither with a happy ending, although the first part is closest – because we leave happy. But, as always with us, tragedy struck early in the next act. 

We rarely had heaven on earth, or hell for that matter. We were somewhere of our own devising, not purgatory. We caught the glow of heaven and the wrath of hell, sometimes back-to-back. Love and hatred alternating, hitting us like left and right hooks, until we were so punch drunk from one another we could barely stand. Too swollen to kiss. Somehow, we could always remember.

We thought like pathetic idiots. Blame was thrown around like sugar on ice – someone had replaced the salt. The problems never went anywhere, and we lived historical to the bitter end. We have fallen into familiar issues. The homebody left brooding and contemplating love, the adventurer out meeting the new. Neither leads to happiness, because the wrong questions are asked.

The scars are a mirror into your heart. They are you in the truest sense, no matter how drop-dead gorgeous you can look in a dress. You're not meant for those nights, but you forget everytime, and there's something here about glory days. There's an old soul, small town girl, being hidden by the glamour somehow. The drinks are hard, company weak and the meaning empty, but it shoots one more night in the head.

What glory days are left for the thinker out of time, out of love? What sweet thoughts could dance long enough to pass the days? How many clean, well-lighted places could ease this old mind? The answer is the same.

There is no such thing as a guilt or remorse, in any meaningful way. Guilt and remorse mean little when the past is fixed and decisions have been made. Choice is a funny thing like that. The freedom to choose, but choices and actions become unfree once taken. The past makes us all unfree, and it sunk us like the hand of poseidon around our necks.

I love you, I'm sorry. Life is hard and my letters dance around the unsaid.

One feeling you wanted

She who would move freely to heaven

suffocates in the lazy, charcoal clouds.

A misguided perspective

searching for a line among dots.

Any line will do and it shows.

 

Pull me out of my skull

where the thoughts tumble and

crash onto the ground like glass figurines

of old lovers and family.

 

A piece of heart for each leaves

a small sum remaining

but the metaphysical may reproduce

or re-grow or

maybe heal itself.

 

No,

let go of the self and

breathe.

 

Ascend.

graveyard of your past

You built your present,

on the graveyard of your past,

and didn't flinch.

 

I hope you enjoy the lonely path,

with the ghosts stuck to your ribs,

tearing at your empty heart.

 

The past can't hurt you anymore,

it's paid you back the favour,

you're abandoned,

left with emptiness,

a soul-death.

 

The only thing worse than a broken heart,

is an empty life in an absent world;

you call it home and walk your path,

alone.