FREED VERSE

Only what's repeated is true 
         (at least, according to Holmes, 
          the autocrat reigning over my breakfast table). 

True, repeat, true, indeed,
only look backwards to know what's real,
but that's to say there's a record to keep.

I turn my pages by ripping them out.

My pages, those darlings:
ill-to-be read again,
they sit,
crumpled,
on the bathroom floor.

They stick on my soles if I dare tread.
They leave inky footprints in their wake. 

They wake. 

Against my inglorious will, they wake.

My footprints, those bastards: 
they get splotchy for days,
all from too much mingling 
with the flakes of dead skin and 
blood 
from all these paper cuts. 

I rip my pages by turning them out. 

The autocrat has done it again:
Only what's true is repeated.