Remnants

Looking back helplessly 
at every foible like Epimetheus. 
Born like a weed in the steamy morning,
I was an aimless, crude creature spinning
flamboyant cobwebs like a confident fool.
I slathered prismatic patterns, grinning like a jester. 
Then, civilization impounded the measures of my dreams.
I became an embarrassed, lying chowderhead, concealing
my crayons. 
I lacked language, locution, or parlance.
I sat absent, a prisoner in rote computation. 
My night dreams merged with day-dreams.
My solo island became a continent.
I tried phoning out with phony phonetic fumbles
but everyone could see.
So, I slipped away, deserting, fleeing,
riding the rails in boxcars.
My passage through nocturnal town and village
untraceable, uncertain, preoccupied with the pigments
of my polyscope. 
Later, I reappeared, reconsidered, and revised, 
replicating the decorations of acuity, imitating
profundity like P. T. Barnum. 
My spectacle drew crowds until I was discovered.
My retreat and retraction now heavy with
fatigue, I know not the lens of my psyche.
In sobriety, I recall all my splinters and ruptures. 
 But my rearranged reissues of adornments 
will persist until I am expelled. 

Published: The Opiate Journal, July 2020

allusionimageryintrospectionmythselffree verse

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