Yesterday Girl

 I tried to call you Sarah, tried to call you

Yesterday, yesterday girl

Tomorrow is a land we can forget regret in

we can sip the sweet cup of grace

And heaven stepping in 

To demand space

For healing

They cut the drug, and share across

The mirror of this reality

Cut time into pills

You may swallow each day

Say

Don't bite off more than you can chew

And I call you Tuesday

Mrs Wednesday

Mother Thursday

Brother Friday

Like the monk

That I've become

Mum is the word

Nobody says

In our vows of silence

And forced forgetting

It's a self-inflicted violence

Against memories

Than stirs and stain

Like tanning of the leather brain

Folded in and on itself

And in each shelf

A book of time is stored

In the cerebral library

But in dementia, the librarian

Has gone mad

Is destroying volumes

Like evidence

Before the Nazis come

To accuse him

Of conspiracy, or herasy

Or speaking his mind

He knows the castle cannot keep

The monastery's library

And it cannot save

These treasures from time's ravages

And the revolution

That makes books obsolete

And turns the leaf of history

Into garbage on the street

And in what dignity is left to him

In self -determination

Before the mind-controllers take control

He sets a conflagration in the heart of the library

In the nerve centre of his soul

Until all knowledge of his life and love

Is lost in obliteration

And the total annihilation

Of his word capital

Until feeling is like a serpent

Swimming in a deep primordial bowl

Making monosyllabic lurchings

For meaning in its soul

And almost reaching expression

Of the reptillian mind

When finally all functioning ceases

Back into the husks we find