the proverbial french fry in an order of onion rings

Flowers in the hourglass


These brittle tears
Eradicate the etch of endless faces
Intuition won't save me now.
These fickle years
Replace the past with shifting places
Yet none my when and how.
My inner Napoleon takes his bow
To the clapping of a bitter crowd
To the hissing of their hidden clouds
Of long-suffering disappointment
In me.
But I am not their Caesar
I no more know their names
Nor recognize their patterned seizures
They call dance
I do not see the same.
These winter fears
Do not thaw beside their frenzied, crackled blaze
And I cannot meet their desperate summer gaze.
These fragile, autumn tears
As I abscize into the dust
Into the lies, to be raked and thus
Burned and scattered over seas.
Forgotten, erased, . . . and free?
A flower in an hourglass
That holds back the sands of grime.
These dreams were never mine.
Not me.
No, not free.
No, no, please don't erase me.