DISCOMFITURE

 

 

DISCOMFITURE

 

Stay still, we ask/ our things, while we repurpose/ them. What we mean is stay, / still, we need a little longer.—From “Repurposed” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 11-22-11

 

Memories are needs reshaped as still points,

if they could just be pinned down to stay

whole before falling like shattered mirrors

that recompose as harlequins of fluid faces

struggling to remould beyond the shadows

and the strange masks that fears and dread

now wear as they strut about as tall desires

we pray would remain longer than a mirage

of remembrances perishing like the carrion

of dreams and endless longings to be here.

 

There are no signs nor arrows on this path

that could retrace those gentle and happy

days when we owned the place where we

could not get lost even if we heroically tried.

We mean to rename these streets and mark

them indelibly so we could come home again.

But those still points are never there nor still

when we need them steadier than chameleons

that we are born with, where our zero point

is neither water, nor dirt, nor fire, nor air.

 

--Albert B. Casuga