poem

 Magician You

Getting toward the end

There can arise two kinds

Of self-loathing

In one version you find

You have failed to shed

Certain objectionable traits or habits you knew

From the beginning needed to go 

But never quite did

Despite all the damage done 

Alternatively, you do evolve

But in all the wrong ways

Replicating predictable patterns

Of all the kinds of sullen men 

You always thought you were not 

And now it’s too late

To try to be anyone else.

The other you, the magician you,

Is sitting over there

Happy as can be 

Holding court in the memory

Care unit with all his strangers

Vanishing everything they remember 

Deep into the bottom of his magic black hat

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