All the Things I can't Remember

Headful of random variables.
Conversations started and ended
by no-one in particular.
Accusations without basis.
Nothing is quite what it seems
in this jumbled lost and found
neural network interruptus.

Which of us was it loved another?
Who stayed out all those nights?
Spent others inviting friends to partake
in a piece of another man's wife?
The smell of hotel toiletries
still leaves me lightheaded.

The therapist sighs and wheedles
while I await configuration
of automatic scripting
to fill in the hours of tabula raisa
beneath the cabled avalanche,
perhaps never to arrive.

The Thaw

Grey afternoon downpour
dissloves purity's veneer
revealing blackened organs,
broken bones of twigs,
a hat, a scarf, a dirty brown puddle,
where once a lonely snowman stood.

Trees that blazed frosted beauty
boldly broadcast their disease.
Pavements that crunched cheerily
slither with excrement
rain vainly tries to wash clean.
The thaw is not pretty.

So too us, with our sloughing off of dragonskin.
Hurtful words that brought hot tears flowing at last
leave infected wounds,
livid scar tissue,
failing organs and twisted limbs
agape to the observer.