Another Life

not unlike the pictures

of today moving

from your phone

to your secure feed

that vanish

in the short interval

after they're shared

the past disappears in words

t s eliot now confined

either to heaven hell or

the circular stairs

of the temporary tower

between his lives warned us

in a bit esoteric

but famous verse

how the memories

of our once-upon-a-time

and the heat of

unsatisfied desires swirl about

enmesh and swell in april

into the present's distortion bubble

not unlike how we each age

with our over embellished stories

about what it was like back then

that we have told

so many times to strangers

and repeated frequently

to bored but loyal friends

how each recitation

confounds each future telling

making it difficult to be certain

how things really were

or if anything we boast about

verifiably transpired

or more to the point

is it only the moment that matters

consigning all that was before

to evaporating perspiration and tatters

alas dear friends who really knows

or even cares if the grandiosity

of what is said ever matches

even a modicum of what was done

in a world born of constant mental distortion

where facts can be shared but never known

and when were any of us

truly convinced after watching

the conduct of presidents and popes

that death is the only way

we get to imagine another life