Ruined Beauty Poem by Patti Masterman

as fictional things often do
I without knowing anyone longer
and no one imagined it away
and pieces polluted with everyone
lesser affairs to wrest implacable mind
you taught me of the hopeless pocketful
life lived simply more
and heart was more complex
than rent paid to a ruined artifact
you laid it all out but the brass name plate
and those to which I led you
they all believed you
to teach the willing lost
gone they were, and beautiful
lost rooms confounded whatever mattered
and if ever I stumbled in front of a pew
no whored train led quite the same to you