during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
******
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.

the women of the past keep
phoning.
there was another yesterday
arrived from out of
state.
she wanted to see
me.
I told her
"no."

I don't want to see
them,
I won't see them.
it would be
awkward
gruesome and
useless.

I know some people who can
watch the same movie
more than
once.

not me.
once I know the
plot
once I know the
ending
whether it's happy or
unhappy or
just plain
dumb,
then

for me
that movie is
finished
forever
and that's why
I refuse
to let
any of my
old movies play
over and over again
for
years.

It's hard to say
When the first onset
Of insecurities
Had taken place

Was it at 17?
When I stared deep
Into the mirror
Despising the reflection?

Was it at 15?
When I dug my fingernails
Into the side of my thigh
When he made me feel like used garbage?

Was it at 13?
When I showed
My mom that award
And it was carelessly tossed on the table?

Was it at 11?
When the snickers
Of my classmates
Reached my heart?

Was it at 9?
When I watched
Mother try to desperately
Cover her imperfections with powder?

Self love?
Self love?
Self love can't dwindle away
When it never existed.

And now at the age
Of barely 20,
I've been searching
The ground
For a speck
Of confidence
And trying my best
To piece together
A backbone
That I never had.

There is a certain elegance in lines,
a grace that attracts the eyes
to that which is cloaked within the
echoic mystery of an ever clever guise.

All that is knit
from the fabric
of a most frantic                  
                                       ­     illusion in space,

borrows movement
                 from a riddle,                          
       poised in a mostly empty place.


It enchants the mind like a diorama
                                                         ­     hung
                                                       ­               upon the
                                                                ­                   fiber optic
                                                           ­                                         sky,
with pictures of the thoughts behind
           the artists telescopic ><><><><><><   eye.


Our      surreal      desires    are    drawn    boldly
  ­                                              from the breathing palette
                                        of a bright reality,
                                   with living loving strokes
                               that portray our very substantiality:

and never will it betray
          the flaws
           in neither an other worldly
symmetry,
                                               nor the immense complexity
of some alternate geometry.

My soul is not tortured like the skin of a man alone in the searing heat of the dessert.
My mind does not crumble into the rubble of a post war city.
My body does not shake it's self into a shaken, splattered, spineless sorbet.
I am happy, not like a bird in spring but happy as I can be.
My mind is composed, not like a master archer but composed all the same.
My angst is not kept in a box of self disbelief wrapped in a ribbon of doubt and despair.
I am, me, happy to be me. I have my issues which occasionally need tissues but nonetheless and nevertheless and nonethemore and alwaysthemost I am happy

don't feel sorry for me.
I am a competent,
satisfied human being.

be sorry for the others
who
fidget
complain

who
constantly
rearrange their
lives
like
furniture.

juggling mates
and
attitudes

their
confusion is
constant

and it will
touch
whoever they
deal with.

beware of them:
one of their
key words is
"love."

and beware those who
only take
instructions from their
God

for they have
failed completely to live their own
lives.

don't feel sorry for me
because I am alone

for even
at the most terrible
moments
humor
is my
companion.

I am a dog walking
backwards

I am a broken
banjo

I am a telephone wire
strung up in
Toledo, Ohio

I am a man
eating a meal
this night
in the month of
September.

put your sympathy
aside.
they say
water held up
Christ:
to come
through
you better be
nearly as
lucky.