Réflexions on being here, not elsewhere, depending on what I said You said...

Did I say What I said You said

You said looking a little forlorn
a little redundant
the contradicting crosses in your eyelashes
thrusting forth the brazen prophet in you for the day
only
no country nor community at your command
bashfully

What is this life ? Once you're dead you're gone
gone forever !
some coarse stele the five a three or perhaps a nine
raven rot working into the rubbed-out stone
long the frangipani branches drifting with the tide
severed from the scarred bones

What you said I could have
the wooden broad sword of your scouring words
scathing my back my nape stung
awakening the nakedness of futile words
fixing memory
vain memory some lines here or there
some thoughts culled out of your hands
how might I eject sense empty the void of your accusing pain
your desolation
retain
keep only the one possible denotation of the moment

Whose ancestral voices
linger in my thoughts in yours
stray strands of concepts trapped
in subliminal dimensions caught just a while
in the slanting light cutting through your escaping inturned eye
interstitial arrows darting through undead time

Will my time age out of time
in the dead of time

conflict between those who beget you
conflict between those who assess you

Is there lack of those who'd hate you enough to love your enemies
come back a reformed reformist and
make the comeback
what you want

No one opts out for
even gone some remember the
harsh things you said the hurtful things you did and
all the things you should have but did not


Or do you depart in disgust
at all this fuss over nothing
the grating chores of shoring up your image
the unbending pride made you the arch-enemy
the fear too late of mending your name
the fumbling efforts to repair for those you cared
the coffee serré with four cubes let your body go
the rubbing spasms in stolen moments
all heinous crimes and more

Better be dead you said
than remember the Dead
and wondered why you tolerated living so vilely
in fear unfree a prisoner of your own will

I too may look back over my shoulder and see
a gaping vast expanse
and look for words teeming words
in lieu of you
a curlicue crescent balancing on a lame branch
in limbo

June 7, 1996 (from the collection - re-worked- longhand notes, 1999)
(c) T. Wignesan - Paris, 2016