What Might Be (Poetry)

All dreams are footnotes now — the drama of the story done —
the plot unravelled for its faults and inconsistencies
and all along the ragged margins — like a fallout zone —
are strings of idle musings — odd scribbled commentaries.

All life’s promise boiled down to words — inadequate to tell
plain truth upon the page — the troubled surface merely skimmed
so old passions dark as any forged in emotion’s deepest well
stay hidden — withering pale their too-feeble limbs.

Who knows what happened to the drive that heated younger blood
to wrestle fate — grab its thin throat and shake its secrets out
expecting an erruption — understanding in a flood —
an awesome deluge from its gaping treasure-spout.

Disappointment stretched apologies for failings — careful — neat
like afterthoughts — half-hearted — and seeming barely warm
where mediocrity became each paragraph — discreet
with vacancies part-filled and whispered hints of scorn.

What’s left is scraps — vague blurs of colour shaded into night
where time rolls its hall of mirrors — echoes to infinity
the distorted image wavers — dissolves to black and white
and what remains pretends it might be poetry.