Thomas Lowe Taylor -- relapse

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No mere matter in your mists
has covered over what went before.
You were no obstacle or destination
in dealing with what was really there,
a subject without a sentence in between,
but somehow left on the pages.

You said this was an avoidance, and
that you'd never write again, but
the compulsion seizes & drives you on before
or wheezes former recollections from
their darkness and holds dreams
in their distance where they room & spin.

I held the months in their silence,
and called desperation my own twin
from what was more indulged than not,
and clattered on from the specific emptying
and repetition of what you sent to the
others in their own haste to draw me in.

Confusion murmurs doubt its friend
and carries passion to the edges of what
is there within its other hours' trend.

March 6, 1995