I’m a perfect portrait of teenage angst
Black pants and an army jacket
Tired eyes atop a solemn expression
High school backdrop
Roaming the halls alone

I’m a perfect portrait of beat down,
Broken up and disappointed

I’m the mess after The Scream
What’s left after The Kiss
I am dreaming of A Sunday Afternoon
On the Island of La Grande Jette
While tracing my mind over the swirls
Of the Starry Night constellations
Over what it could mean

Inside
I am Salvador Dali

Outside
I’m a perfect portrait of all the things I never wanted to be

I am Mona Lisa’s misery

My wife, a psychiatrist, sleeps
through my reading and writing in bed,
the half-whispered lines,
manuscripts piled between us,

but in the deep part of night
when her beeper sounds
she bolts awake to return the page
of a patient afraid he'll **** himself.

She sits in her robe in the kitchen,
listening to the anguished voice
on the phone. She becomes
the vessel that contains his fear,

someone he can trust to tell
things I would tell to a poem.