hey, listen, i know who i am, okay--
in say anything i would be
corey flood. sixty five
love songs to show for a boy
who wants to have sex because mimi
is gonna go to college and then what?
and in beauty and the beast no doubt i would be
the kid teacup who understands nothing but
in catcher i am no one but holden. i am
a professional, full time fiction,
a perpetual reflection.
but mirrors miss things.
look in a mirror to find
something, and miss the thousand other details.
mirrors only show you what you knew already
what you were looking for.
lately i am finding the bad in that--
today underwear in the shape of shorts will do for pants,
today a window of backyard will do for the outside,
today these tulips in the shape of lives seem human to me,
spinning out their petals too wide, too fast,
(just water waiting to be water again, for cell walls to fall)
and those strange black anthers
heaving dust to create
a message from hormones.
what happens to those when we die anyway?
i think i would feel better, maybe
get out of bed better,
if i could say for sure whether
this world is a house of cards or
an ant collection, whether
one piece missing is everything or nothing whether
a person being more or less than a person
is tragedy or casualty
