6620. USED TO BE

USED TO BE (#2)

(without a gambit)
I am thinking of that girl with the amazing eyes,

and the wire which leads to my mind and heart.

I am thinking of something so old it is new again.

Here I sit, shorn and shackled, remembering the life

I think I've already lived.  It's been said you can't go

home again. Forget the 'again'; you can't go home. 

This changing of the clocks and changing of the

guards, and all that festive stuff again and soon

to be, all this is just a sickness with no remedy.

I want to run away. I want to be gone. I want

to dash through the fires, to a dissolution like

that run-down carcass they found on the boat.

It may be Pap Finn, as Huck found out, it may

be my father, but it's of no consequence to me.

I am thinking only of her again, and of 

all those things that used to be.
-
But why then should I be the one with the
carrying grudge of the non-working gun, and
the rubble the steamship leaves behind, trailing a
wake of a hundred dead finds? I want to flee and run
and flee and run again. Remember all that, for me.
Charity begins at home? You can't go home again?
How do I sort this devilish frenzy out : while my heart
beats, while my mind runs, while my heart beats again.
And that girl, with the amazing eyes, zooming down
again on me  -  stretch me open, wide-open heart.
Stretch me open, and let me pretend.