They think that they are clever

They think they know my mind,
that they can prevent the nightmares
that make me wake bathed in sweat on every night,
that by hiding small things from me
in foolish attempts to foil my freedom
I shall be preserved.

Do they know so little?
Do they think that I am not prepared for the future?
I am ignored,
played on the ivory of piano keys,
mocked and reviled,
cruelly forced to keep on with
each passing day-

The day
with its truculent fingernails
upon my throat
with a teasing leathery grip
(coarse like my father's hands on my shirt collar)
as if life, too, believes that I shall be a coward forever.

The day
with its vitriol,
devouring the vestiges of hope
more efficiently
than the H-two-S-O-four
that shares its definition.

The night
with its never-ending solitude
and the stars like the iris of a goddess,
impossibly far away.
They are nearly all dead, now,
whispering that
it is impossible to tell
differences between
the beauty of life
and the beauty of death.

The morning
with its slashing polluted colors
like the ones my mother mixes on her canvases.
The morning with a song from
The Phantom of the Opera
that always makes me weep,
as he sings
"She may not remember me,
but I remember her."

The morning
with my sisters sleeping on green couches
and my brother in repose on the floor
(he, like I, uses a black pillowcase)
and I am the only one in this darkened world
who seems to take me seriously.

I do not mind.
There is only a pleasure in being right,
in the preservation of integrity,
even as friends and old lovers
and newly encountered muses
roll their eyes
and make their accusations of manipulation.
Yes, I am such a man,
I shall say anything at all
if I believe that it will render me
what I require.

I do not mind
that people do not have time for me,
that they do not wish to see my face
and that they wish to avoid
my voice and cracking knuckles
and madness.

The more literate of them
will realize that
Medea would have
done her dreadful killing
even if she had not been slighted.

It makes no difference
for there are no differences.
We are part of the world-
we have taken our carbon from something
and it longs to be free once again.

Even the most mediocre of magicians
can play a shell game.
It is rather less entertaining
for onlookers
if the opponent
does not wish to win,
although at the end of the flipping wrists and marathon talking,
after choosing the wrong repository of treasure,
you can make a person's eyebrows positively
pop out of their forehead
if from your back pocket you flip into your hands
a shell and a golden coin
and tell the charlatan
(who would happily have taken your money and your soul)
that it is of no use to play games
with street performers.

Nothing happens
that would not have happened anyway.
Somebody has to lose.