The dark undazzle

In the Kingdom of the Past, the Brown-Eyed Man is King

It's all so pitiful, really, the little photographs
Around the room of places I've been,
And me in them, the half-read books, the fetishes, this
Tiny arithmetic against the dark undazzle.
Who do we think we're kidding?

Certainly not our selves, those hardy perennials
We take such care of, and feed, who keep on keeping on
Each year, their knotty egos like bulbs
Safe in the damp and dreamy soil of their self-regard.
No way we bamboozle them with these

Shrines to the woebegone, ex votos and reliquary sites
One comes in on one's knees to,
The country of what was, the country of what we pretended to be,
Cruxes and intersections of all we'd thought was fixed.
There is no guilt like the love of guilt.

Charles Wright

This reminds so much not only of rooms, and the little shrines to our own egos that we set up in our rooms, but of blogs . . . . virtual rooms filled with photographs and fetishes and self-regard in their own way, and "tiny arithmetic against the dark undazzle."