It Is Not The Past...Gone! Poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar

It is not the past...
Gone to have had.
In need to be corrected.
Microscoped and examined.
Repeatedly with this to hope,
Hints and clues...
Will reveal renewed,
Precious artifacts.
That explains,
Where we are at these times.
And days.
Revisiting escalating conflicts.

Has anything that has died,
Been revived.
Resuscitated miraculously,
Back to life.
Horrifying shocked eyes.
Or proven with updates,
To validate this as evidence?

No young man or woman,
Can claim to testify...
Having a love to remember,
Lamp lit cobblestone streets.
Or sitting in a horse pulled,
Wagon.

Our future,
For those of us...
Who have long forgotten,
What it was to be '21'.
That future to await for it,
Has long gone to be outdated.
Rusted, dusted and replaced.

Even racism to discriminate,
The color of one's skin...
Is a ridiculous fed vision.
Although for those,
With kept deluded beliefs...
Their ancestors,
Arrived on these shores...
And survived.
Without depending upon,
Diversity.
Of every ethnicity.

'What dream is this,
Are you having?
Whatever it is,
Has begun to disturb my ride! '

Yet...
Re-written is the history.
From sentence to paragraph.
And every page of it,
Deceived.
Continues to keep,
The ones kept ignorant...
Pleased of accomplishments,
Fictioned.

And still,
As unbelievable as it is.
There are many,
Wishing to hope...
That light,
They have begun to see...
At the end,
Of a darkened tunnel.
Is a fire.

A fire!
Created, introduced...
And started.
By someone unmentioned.
Although...
Rumored to have discovered,
That a rubbing two twigs...
Dried and together.
With effort applied.
Kept endeavored.
Will and can,
Make 'their' future...
Much brighter.
Than ever before,
It has been to notice...
Or mention,
Of a difference of it made!

'I don't know what it is.
But...
There is something,
Familiar about this process.
This...trip.'

'What is?
The riding through this tunnel.
Or that light at the end of it?
Finally...
This long journey,
Is reaching its destination.'

'It just seems the doing of it,
Has been done...
Many times before.'

'Before?
Before what? '

'That...
I don't remember! '