I am a Declaration

I am a Declaration

from the son of a father more Ferris Bueller than Abe Froman

the Sausage King of Chicago.

Of a mother more Audrey Hepburn than Truman Capote’s

Holly Golightly.

I am a child

of tangled marionette strings and miscast role-

models in movies too romanticized to actually represent

this hackneyed life.

Though, they couldn’t quite put that

on the divorce papers.

I am an allegory about the difference

of knowledge and knowing oneself.

I am a blushing money’s worth

of selvedge denim, chromexcel leather boots, and slim-fit t-shirts

with some guy’s iconic name

subtly stitched onto a tasteful seam,

whose face I’d less recognize in a crowd,

before a rag or tag of his designer aesthetic.

I am designing a life that suits me,

or at least makes you think that

I’ve been tailored for this.

I am describing Plato’s puppets

with only the words for shadow.

I am shredding threads

when I don’t get a cigarette and

bleeding through blurry

rooms when I’m without amphetamines.

I am the hot snap of a needle

in skin, shooting up

doctor-prescribed, FDA-approved, bovine-grown

insulin.

I am not that addiction

you’re looking for.

I am dependency,

none the less.

Capable of curing cancer,

they told my proud mother

when the specialist tested my quotient,

four years before my brain blowfished

to the sides of my skull,

a complication

of diabetic dehydration.

My mother prayed for me.

They swore to God

that I’d be ok. Now,

I am scrawled handwriting.

I am shaking legs.

I am brain damage induced attention deficit.

I am disordered, I swear.

Except I don’t take oaths now

and we don’t talk anymore.

I am rushing through

this languorous life,

between you

and the philosophers’

fire. Speaking in shades

of a tan someone in the sun.

I am pale skinned.

Behind this view-

finder’s purpose cut prism and single-lens

reflexive box of mirrors stealing

slivers of avatars’

light and life sealed

in silver gelatin.

Monochromatic miniatures

I keep prisoner in my pocket,

until I take them

out and make them

dance, whenever

I feel alone:

enthusiastic smiles,

storied eyes,

poise and posture,

I am exposure.

I am using twenty six letters

someone else created

to form even others’

words into lines and pages

that posture your conscious

view at uniquely the right angle

to show you the secret

at the center of this universe

and its revolutions. Not

the forest or the trees.

I am uncertain

how one swallows the sun

without cliché.

I am in duress.

over why it is

people like me

that have begun to catch on

to the trick

of this more perfect mousetrap

we’ve been designing

that keeps the kill

calm

with soothingly painted walls,

high definition television sets, and over-stuffed couches.

I am fearful

that we are furnishing our coffins

with inconsequential posters

and scotch tape.

I am decorated in the palette of the American

Dream.

I am a collection

of mistakes, emulations and,

other people’s expectations.

I am the empty spaces for all the beauty

I’ll never capture

in any medium. I am just an addled actor

selling designer jeans, reading a reworked message-

lost script to a camera

for a movie that no one bothered

selling tickets

about neither side of a certain coin

that hasn’t yet landed,

flipping somewhere between

poem

and

portrait

and

puppet

and

shadow

and

sun

and

you

and

me

and

cave

and

fire

and