I am saying that I have been here before.

Maybe last spring. Maybe

those glazed purple days

cold with a vivid naked cold

that set my bones afire

martyrized every tree. 
It is the past and I am something.

The cave wall. The murdered palace.

The frontier.

I am the oil field. The scaffold

in the city.

The ghost ship

cresting waves for riches.   
I have been to Paris

Leningrad

Haight-Ashbury

Kissed the bearded men with catfish eyes.

I have made prophecies of their greed

I have made ends justify the means. 
I see better for not seeing clearly.

That black dog on the road, it is a bear

I’ve seen it dance in chains

I’ve seen it speared, skinned, roasted

Its sabre skull laid out on an altar.

I have worshipped fear. 
It is the future and I am nothing

But biology degrading. Corals bleached.

I am nothing but the one bending

to poisoned rivers

in a nuclear winter

past lives packed beneath my feet.