There is treading water.
And then there is lostness
and the bland, depressing
sameness, of everything.

There are bad night’s dreams.
And then there are visions
of the night – in which
one writhes and like
a knotted string snarled
back upon itself one-
finds himself at the
self same starting point.

In the beat
of the drums of the
delirious priest
and the frenzied dance
that is our Faustian pact,
Hope like a stubborn root –
peeks out from between
a rock and a hard place.
And the unwilling lethargy
of a quiescent dawn
is forgotten, as it fades
like the memory of a
quick frolic in the shade
of water side palms dies
in the heat of a
baking desert sun.

But in the rarefied quietness
of our seasons of re-memory
we find – that for all our sweat,
and all our pain, and the make belief
of hope and delirious joy,
we still remain, kept in check
In the self same holding pattern