Another Life

the past disappears in words

not unlike the pictures

of today moving

from your phone

to your secure feed

vanishing in

the short interval

after they're shared

                  *

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 of 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

again not unlike how we each age

with our over embellished stories

about what it was like back then

that we recite so many times

to strangers and repeat 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

                  *

alas dear friends who really knows

or even cares whether the grandiosity

of what is said ever matches

even a modicum of what was done

if the world is born

of deception and conceits

if facts can be shared

but never known

or more to the point

is it only the moment

that truly matters

consigning all that was before

to evaporating perspiration and tatters

and when were any of us

convinced after watching

the conduct of presidents and popes

that death is the only way

we get to imagine another life