Helixes of retrospection
Coil together from the days of
Fragmentary self-reflection,
Always seen in different ways. The
Memories, withholding hatred
As I couldn't have before, in
Scenes more sensory than dated
Show me just a little more than
What I had remembered; plainly
My own whimpering and weakness,
All the shame of my ungainly 
Worthlessness remained to speak, hiss
Venomous but true. Ineptly
Did I try the task, and wanting
Was I found. And still I've kept the
Sting of it, forever haunting
Me in idle recollection,
But I see now also threaded,
With remembrance and dejection,
New dimensions of the dreaded
Failures of the past. A twining
Thread of details flowed adjacent
Facts as I had known them, lining
Up where once the thread of hate spent
All the energy in torture,
All perspective tied to burning
Self; that thread receives retort, for
Now perceived by simply turning
Over points of view are passions
Unexamined which could offer
Some experience, some rations
From within the mental coffers.

All the pain of wounds remaining
As the price to first remember,
Pull the line across the staining
Layers of the bleeding members
Of the past; withdraw with sorrow
Deeper shades within the gory
Wound to take into tomorrow.
Bloodred hues and ochre story,
Richer for that painful richness,
Shows the desperate parties clearer,
Lets me be a better witness.
Small mistakes and those severer
All displayed less passionately,
Memory more fairly meted
Once released from obstinately
Coloring with shame defeated.
Strip the crimson tint from off the
Actions past; beneath, the varied
Interplay of needs that often
Bobbled in the air, were carried
On in bruised and welting purple
Or unable to fulfill were
Left to fester in their hurtful
Monochrome desires. What will or
Fantasy or motive may have
Led to certain situations
That before ourselves we paved while
Knowing half the expectations;
What delusions bolstered taking
Roles that clashed incongruously
With our sad remainders, faking
Just so nearly-ponderously
Our desires and real affections?
Questioning not how; just peering
At the needy introspections
That performed, and with their steering
Twisted candor through denial
And encouraged them to alter
Thus themselves to give requital
To their feelings, then to falter.

Watch the prancing cryptofeeling 
Change its shape and masquerade as
Love within an instant, sealing
Sadly such a plan mislaid as
Providence. Chimeric colors
Mimic patterns for survival
In the wasted psychic dolors,
Is accepted on arrival;
Symbiosis. With another
Finding joy to not be less than
But gestalt, so hope recovers
For a while impressed but destined
Not to thrive in this relation.
That elusive feeling wavered
In its camouflage and station,
Could its counterpart have labored
Under similar conditions?
I will never know that answer, 
But can have the recognition
Of my own confusing dancer:
Loneliness or desperation,
Likely both in turns portraying
Love, but breathing love's oblation
Can't be love despite its praying. 
It was loving but too needy,
Couldn't offer up desiring
From it's emptiness so reedy;
So it found itself conspiring.
As did I, at first unknowing,
Hoping we were truly loving,
That we were in truth bestowing,
Yet that gift was far above me.

With desire, but not for someone,
Rather to become enveloped
And fulfilled by one to come from
Fantasy still undeveloped.
We were not each other's choices,
Yet we chose each other clinging 
To the hope that feelings foisted
Could be true; they stopped the stinging
To believe. And I, deluded,
Couldn't let it go; I craved that
Quality that truth precluded,
So although I could have waived that
Stupid act I didn't. Rather
I persisted dyeing fibers
Hoping newer strands could gather
And could change the hollow cipher
Of an able lover I am.
So in all the tones of desperate
Pantomime can I espy an
Interim devoid of respite.
Trying on diverse delusions,
Failing to accept the object
That my port was an illusion,
Left adrift again, a prospect
I took cowardly and shaded
Differently my being hoping
Misery could be abated.
It was all deceitful coping,
There was not a chance; my trying
To contort myself, veneering
What I am, its fruit was crying,
Merely multicolored tearing.

It was shameful but a lesson,
So we learn through painful dealings
With each other of the stress in
Form and makeup of our feelings.
I was pitiful, disgraceful,
The unmanliness I showed is
Lightly dealt with called distasteful;
But the wretch can still be loaded
With a burden demonstrating
In its wanly colored vestige
The remonstrance integrating
In oneself a cringing message;
In a self-elucidation
Of iniquity one can be
Freed from a deluded station,
And can come to understand the
Feeble grip upon emotion
That a withered soul possesses.
What's the color of devotion?
What's its shade when it impresses
On the soul its proper palate?
I can't tell, but in this cording
And recording the invalid
Vows of yesterday's purporting
Panoplies of passion, all the
Plumage of misled connection
That I blush at but recall to
Know with stoic circumspection,
I relive my lie of courtship
And discern the tint of those who
On delusions are supported.
After all the glinting close to
Vivid blotches of exacting
Woe, there dapples memory with
Embers, washed out tones enacting
Ghosts of masks and tremoring fists.
Fading, false veneer with trappings
Of fidelity; or wanting.
After that the color sapping
Out, away, into the daunting
Depths of time, elapsing steeper.
So my recollection slackened,
Leaving memories still deeper
Where beyond the thread is blackened.