Joshua Keiter

Somehow years passed appeared on my screen from
A journal that I used to write. Some years
The days seem as vivid as a dream but
Other words and details unfamiliar
As if I knew I would remember them
With as much clarity as it took to
Write them all as they happened. Were it not
For the recall of automated bytes
Those moments would be lost. I think they are
In that I do not think of them at all
Except for random happenstance alone
I’m not even blocking out the bad ones
It just happens that we are written on
Eternity which takes so very long

It seems appropriate that so many
Symptoms are unaccounted for despite
So much time gone by doing nothing here
Waiting for some semblance of normalcy
To return as if we figured it out
A long time ago—you know the living
Together without killing each other
Seeing this world for the fragile fuckup
By all means it keeps appearing to be
Strange to feel a sense of nostalgia for
The future we saw when it all shut down
That is long gone along with good weather
We would rather be stuck outside burning
Than inside pretending to change our ways

The sight of her eyes when the light breaks in
And everything gone before rises up
To meet the new road not already told
By voices dancing in light and shadow
Intermittent percussionists scratching
New verse into worn grooves flesh into text
Intersecting with the fourth wall gone out
Going through the unimaginable
The tragedy of silence is in spite
Of the words trapped inside this wooden frame
They branch out like family trees grown up
There is a double meaning to this name
She will be the one who tells your story
So as you live and die listen closely—

Knowing that stories have been with us since
We gathered around the fire listening
To those who experienced what others
Could only just flickering dream about
The heights of what storytelling became
Can arrive here from four years in the past
Even four hundred years in the making
America then told by who we are
Now—more people will see it on these screens
Than could see it with strangers next to them
Sharing the same emotions in the dark
Which is other stories yet to be told
But somehow will be lived by more of us
Gathered to tell the story of tonight

This is the moment when monuments fall
To write another piece of history
That must be given equal weight as those
Who have weighed down our own stories so long
Memory is not only written on
The town square or other prominent space
Meant to keep prominent men in their place
It is written in graffiti stained hands
When a tag cannot simply be wiped clean
But its voices and names are reckoned with
Under the overpass as we travel
From where we live to where we are going
In one forward motion sometimes held back
By the weight of falling stone off the track

Since nothing here is ever accomplished
I guess I’ll keep on writing these poems
In blank verse this time nothing iambic
Seems to last very long—or so it seems
Nay it is, reader—I know not which seems
You refer to as I have only just
Enough left in me to cauterize wounds
I have no idea where they come from
Except where I am set apart from all
That dismays this world if it ever stopped
Listening to itself speaking nonsense
And liberating itself from these fools
Who saunter about like the Lone Ranger
Committing treason and expecting rain