totem world

you get the past wrong
it’s the particular way you get it wrong
as history
with a single horizon lined
with earthen relics crusted dust
and the smell of mothballs
through a deep shadow
plotted carefully little ordered pots
and figurines on level ground
inventing tradition and inventing revolution
and my ghosted body roaming a great distance
locked in a frontal immovable pose
sopped with rain squinting like I can’t see
always other to myself my skin opens easily
split into two distinct worlds pushing down
varnished with fact and your mouth open
with a language that calls me home
this mix of memory and salvaged
belief in order over loud singing
pronouncing your nostalgia