The More You Write, the More You Will Have to Write

Each new life brings new routines,
Altered maintenance patterns.
Change jobs, change commutes, change hours

Within which to wake or sleep,
Change lovers, change chores, add pets,
Subtract pets, change addresses—

Each shift’s a new existence
Defined by its new rhythms.
And so you become estranged

From all your previous lives,
And when you remember them,
If you’re the type of person

Who likes to cast the mind back
Like a fish lure armed with hooks
To see what will take the bait,

Bit of tempting reflection,
A wriggling worm of nostalgia,
You’re startled by the monsters

You drag up from your lost worlds,
Well-adapted to deep pasts
But hard to fathom as real.

Did you really live like that,
Did that night monster exist
Who wandered the deep, green dark

On the floor of the cosmos
Every night, for whom the stars
Were the nearest thing to sun,

Who drank hard and read obits
And launched road trips at midnight?
Did that you ever exist

Or any of your others?
Don’t investigate the links.
You’d just digress forever.