If it were I

In contort streams and fields the guttered coat-tails drip and dream,
Young were forgiven, their darkened edges left to scheme.
Questions moved to action others, on Sundays were their thrall,
But question none that enters minds when pulled asunder in the haul.
Words do make a vicious spike on which they fall.

Greater still, it moved me and their sin,
No frightened boy was found to stay inside and lest to grin,
Or longer last in cheap disguise and hide within.

Now narrowed eyes strained my face,
Gulp down that endless dreamt up place,
The desert you were born to never did quite leave,
Dunes held out what your heart would thieve.

Sculpted breaths and fettered in your tongue’s protests,
No wizened caution drifted by as bursting shadows taunt the sky,
Your guest suppressed was frightened with a dead man’s words,
“If it were I”, mocks like herds,
Your candied shell of thoughts ablaze within the dust of that dreamt up place.