i'm a swindler,
a trickster,
a not-so-great pretender.
i live my life as an imposter
among the scholars that call themselves
my colleagues,
equals.
what achievements? pure luck
what success? just timing
was my effort ever as
earnest
as it could've, should've been?

a stranger wears my face, but with less decay;
in the distance, hidden in the summer’s maize
I see an imposter that answers to my name,
and in rapture he watches as the yellow rots away.
A decade ago, I recall the same.

in the distance, a stranger who seems closer today -
idly, I wonder why I’m walking his way.

These poems I write, they’re my escape,
though from what I do not know.
My troubles seem to evaporate
the moment I let them show.

I write about love, which is ironic
because I’ve never had a lover.
I used to think maybe I was sick;
for I’ve never longed for one either.

I write about death when I’m feeling down
so I can cry to something new,
but thinking to when I lost real tears,
maybe they weren’t mine to lose.

Even now as I write this down
- my headphones on but paused -
I wonder where my motives are bound,
for I always feel like a fraud.

The sheep in wolf's clothing,
The fraud the fake-
Does that bundle of grey fur,
Hide the mistakes you make?

Sing of sleep little sheep,
Or are you still awake?
Do those howls and growls
leave you too frightened to shake?

You've got them convinced,
So let's hope for your sake,
That they'll never realize,
And that you'll catch a break

Like a monster
wearing my own skin,
I question yet again
whether the cries I upend
are signs of intelligence or
the incoherent utterances
of an imposter begging
to be let in.

My writing will never be nice.
It will never have rhyme or reason or hold iambic pentameter.
It is not typewritten on aged paper bought from a small bookstore, carried home hurriedly under a black coat in a downpour.
My experiences are not universal,
on the contrary,
they are painfully singular stories.
My writing will never be featured in a book,
or on the front page of a trusted source,
it will be buried away in a desk,
dormant with the other scraps of musings once cherished.
I am not one like Keats, Byron, Frost, Dickinson, or Poe,
I, for all intents and purposes, am a fawn lost in the forest,
admiring the sights and sounds around me,
listening to those wise ones who can describe them in such perfect tone.
It would be fair to say that I am not even a poet,
I am simply a brain that thinks,
A body that moves,
And a soul that feels that very special something.