Not So Endless

Scalped bodies with familiar hair
scattered almost everywhere
have faded into nothing
but a memory.
I can’t trust the past
as its presented as far as I can throw
the person reading out
the version that they have of it.
We teach with plastic walls put up
for temporary days in the most
fleeting ways to just distract
from all the gaps left
in the open for the few with
further questions left to see.
Why have we made being wrong
the scarlet letter of the century,
when it is merely the first step
in getting right with all
the train tracks realigned?
It’s a forgiveness we are missing
that we cannot find
no matter how many half eaten
fallen trees we search the dirt under.
We are leaving each other
with knives in our guts
on the roadside
while the ones who can
all go and hide away
stuck in the old ways
for their not so endless days.
Everything is temporary
like a sandcastle sitting
at the edge of where
the tide kisses the land
and when the sand
all starts to fall apart
only an idiot would chase it
as its pulled into the deep
where all our darkness
likes to gather up
and sleep.