To Be, or . . . . It’s Not a Question
Why did we ever buy
the other story, the one
in which we walk
with heads held as high
as deciding otherwise?
This is set without
our consent—
though we’ve conceded
we’ve consented to assuage
our sixth sense of soul.
Try stepping aside,
outside your own shadow:
it’ll take funhouse strides
to strike the balance, to
dodge your own reflection,
to see around your own
conscious self – slippery,
slimier than a hand,
the same one that
with the sleightly other
helps wrangle the lies
you don’t want
to show, the lies
that are the truth of you.
If only they all came out!
Ah, the relief!
The pure ease
of that pain!
Meanwhile, the sheer effort
of holding in, holding back,
holding forth – holding at all
the broken-winged bird
of your heart. It’s
Herculean, really,
ridiculous as myth,
silly as saying any
thing, any way,
anyhow.
- © D.R. James 2022
D. R. James’s latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020); his micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is free, fun, and printable-for-folding at the Origami Poems Project; and individual poems have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and journals. He lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan, USA.
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