Once, Now

Remember you were young once,
Remember I loved you once.
And in that love
Lives a fossil of your Beauty.
Keep it as a token
Or throw it away,
But I know on a certain kind of night
You'll rummage through your trash,
In search of a memento
Of Innocence gone astray.

If you were perfect
I wouldn't be able to see you.
Wouldn't know where to look;
Or how.
The blemish on your skin
Defines you for me,
Like the deified image of a god
Simplified for a mortal,
Makes my eyes remember your face,
Gives me a place
To look at and wonder:
What it would be like
If it could be erased.


There is no flow in my life.
I cannot make it rain
With words, with rhymes,
I cannot make my music chime
With the ease of a natural melody.
Whatever I need,
I construct -
A primitive man as if -
Navigating through a world unknown.
I borrow, I steal, I grope,
I remain hungered with a hope,
That I find everyday
A moving passage preserved without decay,
Left behind
By a beautiful mind
That suffered as I,
A song that is Beauty itself:
A vestige whatsoever,
That would make my heart resonate
As you once did,
Before our million winters of hate.
Like the recovering addict,
Whose blood cells well recall
The rush of sweet poison against their walls,
I remain forever in thrall
Of a time my left brain should've long erased.