If I Were History Poem by RIC BASTASA

your greatness is only in the hearing and then on the retelling,
all stories where you are never a part, not even one of those minor
characters there, you are not in the picture not even as a dog waiting by the door,
or a sparrow by the window pecking upon a rumor,
you wanted to be irresponsible about what happened, a shadow arrived
opened the gate and waited for hours for its body of lies,
and then the party began, drunken bastards, bitching dogs,
spoiled brats, and a landscape of desert and rocks and a whole stretch
of sands to a seeming eternity of emptiness,
you are a good storyteller from the beginning of the party till it ended
at midnight,
someone is dragged and drugged and dead.
and all you say is, i do not know, i have nothing to do with this,
i am not even there, i am only narrating it.
if i were history, i would have smashed you from rock to dust