Albums
How I dread
those padded volumes,
oversize reams of
bookshelf ballast;
plastic sheathed
broad heavy sheets
encased in slick
embossed faux leather.
Entrapped within,
each passing fails,
each gain reduces,
not then, but now–
or if then, more so–
flash yanked
from the gentle
scattered drift
of faithfully flawed recollection;
flat-stripped of two, but
two dimensions rest.
How could that not scar
which, growing still,
in chemical harvest,
now was but once?
I don't need to wake
the rancid death
of fading stasis.
Nov. '99
