Self-Portrait

I worship my heroes at the break of day,
Scour the paper for when they're in town,
Defend them in absentia against the common lot,
Connect them with the sublime ones in a compact whole.

I put on myself the colors of my heroes,
Show allegiance to the cause with bumper stickers,
See their pale reflections outside my window,
Dream before their pictures on my computer screen all day.

In a world of people they express things right,
They say, as one man, all a man can say,
They lift themselves, with sweat and vision, to a rarefied plane,
Through natural force never live the compromised life.

Oh, I know that there is darkness behind the drive
But it never comes across, except transformed
—All that they've lived turns back into gold.
They bring, from some other realm, an ineffable feeling.

But it's not what they do but who they are that counts;
They're just like me, these people that aren't real,
I don't know who they are, if they even exist
But I know that they've lived the same life I have.

The gurus and hierophants try to tell me
They are parts of myself, just like people in a dream,
That creating and perceiving are identical twins
That unify as one. But I won't believe,

I bow down to the icons as if to God,
Keep track of all they do, like a mother
Keeps her child's hair and feces in a book.
I imagine them on beaches with their families

Sharing what we share, with society's validation,
The sense that something in our eyes revolves
Around them...but maybe it's not our hopes and fears
They're carrying, we only will them to be.

There are no dreams of mine they haven't captured—
Maybe it's not their dreams, but they themselves.
Maybe it's not them, but some strange mirror,
Better to have something, than nothing, there.