Dragging the Past
Claire Scott
Dragging the past like a bag of stones
heavy and useless
an uncle with wandering hands
a mother with bottles of booze
the marriage that couldn’t
a husband who wouldn’t
a driver texting through a light
a son with a damaged spine
the linger of love’s lost calls
bells with silent tongues
rearranging stones like a kaleidoscope
expecting a different result
some scientist’s definition of insanity
Ptolemy? Newton? Edison?
or was it the one with dandelion hair?
I check the mirrors for glimmers of madness
ropey scars on my wrist
Seroquel by my side
always the same stones
trapped like amber bugs
Heraclitus was wrong
you do step in the same stream
again and again
where are the conjunctions
to connect me to the future
a ladder of ands and therefores to climb up
to a fresh dawn
(the universe yawns)
I slip on the past like a pair
of soft slippers
squeezing life out of loss
sucking the sour
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