i don't know what you think of me but want to know because i need to know what I think of myself

i don't know what you think of me
i know that I'm the one standing on the desk
raising cheap rum to the ceiling
pretending i'm something. I've always liked the word presume because I presume, and hope that other people presume, and expect that if I pretend others will presume and believe in something I don't believe in, which is myself. I imagine that when new borns see me with half closed eyes all they see is future, and I hope that when I laugh with people or experience something with them, or have an adventure with friends, that I can make it worth it because it will be amplified.
you know me, I'm the one people know straight through and know nothing about. I give them one side, and a lot of it,
I have never been myself,
I have torn the veil,
I have never reached out and cut it,
because I couldn't reach it,
and didn't have a knife,
and was scared to cut it when I could,
becuase in short I was afraid.

i'm the kid who sang in the shower, because I just needed to be heard.
i'm the kid who was never good at anything, especially all the things I wanted to be good at.
i'm the kid who needs an audience,
i'm the kid who is more wealthy when someone thanks me
or says, when I do not expect it, 'that's amazing you know, i think that's amazing'

i've never done anything amazing in my life.

i'm the kid who doesn't what to think about mirrors
i'm the kid who's hopped up on Lacan and dropping mirror stage allusions,
the kid who practices faces and impression against myself (like an athlete I never was)
i'm the kid who didn't look in the mirror for three years, because I didn't think I liked the kid i was.

i'm the kid whose attractive in that 'this is the variable that doesn't fit' sort of way, or at least, i hope i am.

i'm the kid who wants to be cool,
all i ever wanted to be told, 'was your the best'
all i ever wanted people to be proud of was that 'i knew him'
or 'he was a crazy kid, but amazing'

i don't know who i am,
i identify with shadows and peter pan
i imagine that poetry is a woman who is starving herself down the hall from me,
and i need to find her, make her eat,
convince her of what i know,
tell her she's beautiful and let her grow,
i think poetry doesn't know how beautiful she is,
and has forgotten that prose is the second, uglier one that walked into the party,
not the ivory princess that launched a thousand ships in a verse,
and made prose beg forever for the lip gloss that uttered the words

i think the poetry lost her mind or her memory
i can't give her a new mentality,
but i can remind,

which is why all I utter is trite, cliched poetry,
when I'm out of my mind, or crazy, or drunk on the desk,
pointing to the sky, wishing she can see me and will presume,
pretending that I am what she presumes,
and not the liar-theif that wants you tell him something
he is so he can know what he should tell you
he believes.






i never expected for that.