Maybe / Project Poem-A-Day: Day 7
In private my fingers coiled around cigarette filters,
highball glasses, and each other like priests
bent together in penance.
my private oxygen was tainted with smoke,
when I threw my mother’s car down residential streets
halfway drunk enough to pretend
I was James Dean,
Bruce Lee, or Bukowski.
But I was not a cracked and broken shell
nurturing a glorious soul
awaiting its own maturity. Not a cocoon, unhatched egg,
or whatever coming-of-age metaphor
the poet might prefer. I was just a terrible
role model for the youth I worked with; as I told them
to care about themselves, their families,
communities, I was doing none of it
in my own life. In a rush to be
worthwhile in someone’s eyes,
I made up stories about the future
I hoped they would recite at bedtime.
There is not enough life in life
to make it grander. Not enough life
in any man, that he can be who he claims to be.
After 30 years, I only hope each lie I tell
is less egregious than the last one.
Maybe that means I’m broken.