Etches

Crumpled youth
Disposed like a rejected note
Balled in anger and fisted in the wind
Retrieved as an after-thought
Rolled out and smoothed over
But the relentless spider veins of time
Permanently etched on this once flawless canvas
Tell a long tale of regret and resignation
No writer’s stroke can erase this history
It’s ink stains like an undiluted dye - its fixed

Stubborn folds
Like insistent memories
Blind to my affront
Lingering shamelessly and showing themselves
Boldly at the door of my tired mind
Taunting me with pictures of my fresh youth
To torment me with a lost past
As fleeting as a dream
Disrupted when only barely started
And leaving me to tell its end