Rough Draft Composition by Cloacina

Must have been
a kind fever,
the blind heat of youth
which wooed relentless
time to slow.

Could I have ever believed
I walked endless
labyrinths in some emerald city?

Time,
is a cruel collector,
fills a jar
with fading lights,
and frozen marbles.

Nails all things
to dead boards,
to litter dark closets,
forgotten.

Here,
all lives and universes go.
And in its bottomless pockets
all measures
of unused possibilities.

Dust settles
buries the old
ideas,
these dying streets.

My scarred soles settle
in the city of ash,
and origami men.

I watch one man passing.
His skin grows soft, thin,
wrinkled,
the form grows weak and useless.

I watch his brightness
as it fades away.
A brilliant cloud,
given over to grey.

Watch his flesh
turn moldy,
stained sick yellow
by sun and time.

Darkness collects
like charcoal smudges
and mislayed ink.

Shadowy spots swarming
over his composition
as if he were
already dead.

I see other men come to cut him
with rough actions
and sharp words.

They are changing the pattern
he holds in his center.

I weep
for his delicate flesh
scarred by holes,
as lines fade, bleed
from the memory
from the mouth.

"Near useless,"
I hear the fresh papers whisper.
"Ready for the trash."

New lines
are running out of room and foundation
to be layed,
but oh the story
I can read on his polished skin.

I watch the man,
face full of dark dust
and crinkly lines
crumple
beneath invisible hands.

Tossed by the winds of life
and death,
soaked by hard rains,
reduced to unrecognizable dust,
that cannot begin to hold
all that he was.

Finally,
he is swallowed
by the very streets he built.

He cut a path earlier,
it was clear and strong,
but all marks heaI.
I search for priceless scars
beneath a jealous earth.

The ghost of my footprints
chase me
into the unknown,
I hope
it is not the unknowing.

I remember,
there was a silver tub,
in the chapel of white,
where they washed her feet before
they walked streets of legend
and gold.

Walls erode,
the tin will rust,
and the feet that held her up,
collapsed beneath
the distance
the destination of dust.

How precious the toes
that walked these very paths.....
prints blown away
by the irreverence of time.

So blessed
the hands that held them for awhile,
that I sink in envy
of the knees which bowed,
to wipe away the impatient dirt,
which gave up the loyalty of earth,
to cling to her for awhile.

And I think of a man's feet
also,
which I washed in a tub of white
in holy walls of silver,
in sinful reverance.

I hope there are back up copies
in digital.