"AHHHHH...IS IT...YER SELF THAT'S...IN IT?

here I am
thin now fat then
thin again

here the hair
short now long then long
in the long long ago

the same features
scattered across time
sticky-out ears...bulgy eyes...

curly hair
only the eyes change
( and remain the same ).


still the sad shy smile
flickers across
the ages

here I am
almost
handsome

her I am
my usual not
always the same laugh

the photographs
play with me
change and amend me

shuffle me through years
tears...different me's
me's I never knew I'd be

I smile my
by now
characteristic smile

laugh my laugh
that is my own
and no others

I've a feeling that
the photographs
haven't yet

finished with me
that there will be
lots more me to come

I close the album
put myself back
on the shelf

get on with the
business of being
my self


*

Being punctuated is a fierce painful business altogher...I remembered being full stopped and clare ta God but wasn't I in a coma for weeks on end. I was then locked up in brackets for another week and all my quotation marks taken away from me so I could hardly speak at all. Then I was given a life sentence to be my self for the rest of my life.

Too many Dónalls spoil the broth of a boy...joining the dots of me...painting by numbers the me of I.