DIRT
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
The wind blew towards me on my back. It hissed,
“The past is there. It never goes away.”
Those deaths are there. That time those two lips kissed
Your mouth and left; you learned not to pray
Because the words go up to nothing. Dead
Pets lie beneath the garden where we dug
Their graves. You can’t escape the day you wed
With hope condemned. Your heart will never shrug
The worst away. The muscle of the heart
Is muscle and some unclean blood. Their hot
Desires are pains. Your passions that depart
Are never lost. The past is always taut.
The past demands. Your history disdains
Attempts to scrub away your unwashed stains.
~ Phillip Whidden