I.
The backdrop changes before me and I think I am anew
To be anew, to be reborn, one must have been, at first
Have I been, at first?
Perhaps, and yet. . .

II.
I’ve not yet been here, quarterly
I’ve only been in passing
Sitting in the space of life
With fleeting moments lasting
See me and time we know the score
We know we’re not exclusive
Yet staying codependent makes
Our love affair abusive
Time wipes the scene and all is gone
And then it starts replacing
But I can feel the difference and
I see the lines erasing
There’s not much left that used to be
I point this out at will
But newness covers like a moss
The oldness dead and still
Perhaps I’m new, or not yet old
But I have seen the stage
Set with dirt and wood and rock
And ink upon the page

III.
Do I think I have agency? Perhaps I do, but then
It seems I start to do something and do something again
And the old that was repeats itself with new baubles and bells
Dressed up nice, repainted, and the old as new resells
Do I think I have agency? Perhaps I don’t, and yet
I’d rather play my fight with Fate than lie down dead, I bet
And the predetermined actions I will act out as a player
The Game of Life’s veneer shall soon obtain another layer

IV.
There’s a war within this corporeal host
And there’s not yet a clear winner
There’s half that’s fed, half that’s naturally stronger
Brute force and technique
Jesse and Cass, and the sun might be coming
But who will burn?

V.
And of course it ends here, because of course it always had to
The crisis, this crisis, dressed up as though it were something new
There’s nothing new that comes from me:
I am derivative.
See me in the words of giants, see me in the spittle of groundlings
I will bind, with my arms I will bind
Feel them as vines, wrap around you and press
Girth upon your body
A bound book we shall be, and I will bring you to the well
Down shall we fall, Prospero’s tome, bound book’s tomb
I will bind you.
And in the absence of binding I shall seek you out
I will gaze for your eyes in a crowd:
Brown, blue, green, hazel, gray
Feel them upon you as a microscope, focusing
I shall find you.
Though with finding and with binding,
two shall join as one
Can there be two alone as one?
For the two exist as funhouse mirrors of
Past experience current
There will never be another one quite like
The other one you were quite like
The other ones you’ve been quite like
‘til now
And so with arbitrary electus tempus
Now is not the same
Today is but the only day
Today is not a copy of
The days that came before.
And of course it ends here.
Where else could it have begun?