I wish the present was as good
as how I remember the past.
Fond memories of years gone by,
selective at best,
the worst ******* times of my life
seem comfortably nostalgic.

     I spread poison over ant hills
      by the hundreds, each a foot taller than
     the next, dispersed among the soggy eight
     inch grass, hopefully guiding them toward
     neighboring yards…It was early spring.
     Wet. Cold. Cloudy and I was tweaking like hell,
     day 4 or 5 or 6 in abstinence from
     a nasty three year addiction.

The brain simply wants to protect.
I only remember the ant hills.
the sheer size of them and
how many ants lived in each
1,000? 10,000? 100,000?
It didn’t really matter

because

the present you
won’t remember anyway,
thoughts group together like gifts
under a Christmas tree except the tree
is set up somewhere under a sheet in an attic
of a house that isn't even yours.
Pretty soon there are more gifts in place
and the new gifts cover the old gifts
and the old gifts melt into the rafters
during the heat of Texas summers.

The past can always be
what you want it to be.

No sense worrying about today...