The Prismatic Self
I say the word and feign a Freudian slip
From between its legs duplicities drip
Often doubling as a quip and tasting chalky, just a bit
History will record the troubling truth
that I never existed if I don’t submit
I’ll submit this thing as if it’s a soliloquy
while being transparent with reverse psychology
When transparency is brutal it packs a voice
and reverse psychology, feudal and conundrous
remains my voodoo doll of sadistic choice
I’ll submit to this contest and play my part
of being a number somewhere south of the winners art
Once again I’ll suck up to the system
and once again with all its heart the system will suck me down
without even a gesture of orbiter dictum
A social mirror once said, “we love you, submit to me”
I used to show it what I wish I could really be
but it cared more for its own scripted ego
and tried to love me like a gas-lighting lover
so I gave it the finger more than ten years ago
I’ve been told that only the cream earns Summa Cum Laude
I graduated Some Come Later from the hallows of a Christian god
So how should I wear the facade upon this stage?
I shouldn’t use “dude”, nor cliched kitsch like I just did
But I’ll not to be sullied by a tired script from a mirror’s page
Yet for the scripted glory this poet pines
He rolls his eyes at the rules, and colors colors outside the lines
Prismatic angles he declines and spanks his colors with twisted sticks
With blinding tinnitus in his transient sight he thus surrenders
and submits (to) his magniloquentesque amateur parlor tricks
Earth to novice poet... Dude, submitting is not as painful as it seems
Novice poet to Earth… No Dude, you know when falls the silent tree
I hear poetic voices but my poetic choices have disqualified me, so
this is my last reverse transmission into my pathetic poetic pipe dreams
Thank you kindly. No offense but I should just go
Copyright © Gary Baldwin | Year Posted 2025
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