Things, Shape And Change Poem by Barry Van Asten

Not one atom of her do I know -
It makes a Tartarus of my pains. I'll go,
Quick and crooked as a grey ghost in rhythms
That boom to the beating of brave decisions.

And the things that we said yesterday
Will return in their own unstoppable way
To shape this devotional act of ours;
To haunt us with words that creep through the years.

And in the seven world, she is the wind
Where I am the other world's calling.
But I cannot see past my twenty-ninth summer
Or the flicker of the old world's glamour.

While stammering through my introspection:
I am dumb in my disappearing origin.
And love will blood, where it has tumbled
To the great mechanism of the dead,

Gazing like Narcissus at the watering hole
To find love a shadow of his own soul
And the calamity of passion too much to bear
On one so young that lingered there.

Yet, we dreamt beneath the deep and dark meandering
While inside our hearts the universe was falling;
Locked in strangeness, surprised in our skin:
We are minuscule in our momentum within.

But history is awakened and made for twisting -
My heart sleeps in the fold by the lake's light, drifting.
And smiles of alabastor, return lipless grins
Stretched over dreamt isles - asleep in our skins.