True Story Of What Was

The light blue flickering rhythm
Of the neighbor's big console TV
Is basking on the ceiling
Of another insomniatic spree

And outside sleep's open window
Between the drops of rain
History is writing a recipe book
For every earthly pain

Oh, to clean up the clutter of echoes
Coming in and out of focus
Words spoken like locusts
Sing and sing in my head

And thing is, they often seem
In my memory's long dream
To be superfluous
To the true story of what was

'Cuz

Real is real
Regardless of what you try
To say
Or say away

Real is real relentless
While words distract and dismay
Words that change their tune
Though the story remains the same

Words that fill me quickly
And then are slow to drain
Dialogues that dither down reminiscent
Of the way it likes to rain

Every screen, a smoke screen
Oh, to dream
Just for a moment, the picture
Outside the frame

Then in a flash, the light blue horizon
Spanning a sudden black
Is sucked into the vanishing point
And quiet rushes back

To search for the downbeat
In a tabla symphony
To search in the darkness
For someone who looks like me

Though I'm not really who I said I was
Or who I thought I'd be

Just a collection of recollections
Conversations consisting
Of the kind of marks we make
When we're trying to make a pen work again

A lifetime of them

I say to me, now here listening
I say to the locusts
That sing and sing to me sitting
Now here on the front porch swing of my eyes

I hereby amend
Whatever I've ever said
With this sigh