i.

I imagine you
as a statuette
looking so nondescript
and gilded in vague remembrance
as I attempt to pull you
from the swift current
of time
and come up only
with a corroded
representation.
I wish emphatically
for details
for the idiosyncracies
of your existence
to be re-enacted
in my mind
with perfect clarity
but come up
with faded images
crumbling more every moment.
I feel so desperate
in knowing
I had the knowledge
of your every curve
but twenty five hours later
your image dissolves
in the solvent of every day input
leaving only cheap statuettes--
no rival for the real thing,
but the only available souvenir.






ii.

remembrance is
now so
fickle, foul--
(I am)
forgotten
in familiar places
filled with
unfamiliar people
(always, so omnipotently)
changing the players
understudies, pawns
predicting passages
poignantly offstage
but when the lights come up
blank
like your face
in this
fickle, foul
mind.






iii.

completely lost on me
is the way I have known you
for ages, for days
(so anachronistic were the moments)
your syntax all a-jumbled
perfectly nonsensical and undefined
some faith in reality
tells me you exist
some laughing demigod
pulls your being from my memory
but for the poetry
(always just the poetry).

05/22/2002