Friday, September 24, 2010

Family Portrait



Colors leech away – leave some traces:
kindergarten tempera paint – childhood
crayon smudges on the faces – and yet

further drained to faintness by the grind
of some dark agency which scavenges
and loots the memory – transmutes

each member of the family into recyclable
commodities your dreams can wield
as profligately in their internecine schemes

as dreams all seem to need to do. Whatever
mystic fluid made up him and her and her
and him and you flows through an artery

that endlessly will bleed for you as long
as you are rankled by the mystery of history –
the doubt – by your determination to discover,

alter, re-create some semblance of what
any of it was about. They may fade
to pallid white but they will not run out.






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