A string of staccato vowels,
a coterie of fireworks, a protean waltz
churning beneath my left breast pocket
like so many precipitous waves.
I wilt under observation,
there are too many eyes
in this room and I cannot
answer them without forgetting myself.
–
I am a dummy, a trampled wallflower
peeling my spine-prim as a starched collar-
from the shell of a walnut.
I would do anything
to avoid the strop, the proboscis,
the razor-tongued princesses
deadening in their conceit.
–
I am a well no deeper than a thimble
what I lack cannot be embellished,
what I possess is scarcely worth mimicry.
The stars lie down for me,
they beget me, how can I go on
wasting chance after chance
in the preservation of illusion?
mindlovemisery 