History’s History and It's Not Quite 2015 Again (Or 1916 Either)

History’s History and It's Not Quite 2015 Again

(Or 1916 Either)

Maybe “repeat” isn’t the right word, 

Not quite wrong either:

Refamiliarize. Recur. Emend?

Not quite right 

Either.

Maybe “past” isn’t the right word,

Not quite wrong either:

Rear-windowed. Behind us. At an end?

Not quite right 

Either.

Maybe “over” isn’t the right word,

Not quite wrong either:

Completed. Finished. Over-ripened?

Not quite right 

Either.

History’s past:

Histories past:

History’s passed:

Histories passed:

Clinging and clawing and discarding

The 2015 of Clubs along with

Trumps and Clintons and Bushes, structures:

Institutions and unfair, stacked decks,

Gray spades and bleeding hearts

And blood-licked, diamond-tipped 

Pitchforks.

Dick Clark’s drooping pomme from 

Heaven to Anderson and Kathy

And confetti, the faux organic:

Celebrations and cop barricades:

Between mobs and gods and 

Fear and democracy

And faith. 

Perched between poem and prose,

Nestled between beats,

And uneasy asyncopation:

Protean, indulgent essaying:

Tangent to story: myth:

Pause hyperactively.

Resting!

Rhyme is the right word:

And wrong too.

Nostalgia from two lines ago:

And wrong too.