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MY PAST CHANGES SO

by Chris Wayan, 1985, reworked 1998.

"It's never too late to have a happy childhood"
or
How I climbed up from hell to happiness in seventeen stanzas.

CLING: to the rock of smile,
and all the while
deeper cracks the dome.

DOUBT: dirt in the soup;
cataract eye drift murky wrong.
Blind hound hunts your eye.

ALONE: surrounded by
Recalled cold giants,
Pain burn you dry.

BITTER: mud remain,
Salt the cut eye--
Stung, you'll see.

ANGER: blood hiss faster,
Hope a shore away but closer, vaster
Even than their universal lie.

FIGHT: the blare of rationalltheworld.
Even in your heart-root,
how foul the elders howl!

LOSE: jungles of confuse,
lime umbrellas hide
guerrilla urges from:

SCORN: napalming red
from spin-steel crabs
Smug in blue above.

FEAR: only murk
can save you now:
the clear you sought is die.

SLOW: the horrorlakes of blood
Mud the earth's so-silent mouth.
Wet lips bend; the justice-whistle rise.

HELP: as earth you fed,
Underground surge up
to you defend.

HAWKS archaic-eyed
may scream and reach to rend;
Yet you don't end.

BENT, my new eye faces in.
Persecute me, can I? Oh yes still
Neglect, belittle--but not quite kill.

BUILD cathedral, trash on can:
In the wilderness of brain,
Slow those walls expand--
but jaunty stand!

WIND huffed up the ediface
Breeds white lenses
where no cloud's been
Since all began.

RAINS on gargoyle spires
Drain down the raw-reliefs.
Scented petaled fires
are sprouting: unbeliefs.

WILD, your garden.
Slow the dreams grow.
I don't know about you, but
My past changes--so.

That is: for the abused, there are stages where being bitter or confused or avoiding or obsessive aren't character flaws but survival tactics--necessary, but only in that stage. Take the long view. Because in the long run, you can climb out of your deadly past. Given a lot of work, and time, and tolerance toward some very strange behavior.


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