prologue
I am not my voice
My voice is not my name
My name is not my face
My face is not my mind
My mind is not my shadow
My shadow is not a ghost
My ghost is not a dream
My dream is not a mirror
The mirror is not my mood
My mood is not myself
Myself is not an individual
The individual is not I
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I.
My individual face in the mirror
shadows my mind
like a ghost of myself
that’s forgotten its name
—maybe it was just a dream
so the voice tells me
but I’m not in the mood
to seek confirmation
II.
Because I am not myself
my mind is of such a daydreaming mood
it thinks I should face
my shadow in the mirror
who names my ghost’s individual name
III.
Beside itself
the mirror laughs itself silly
until it loses its voice
over the ghost of a silent joke
it overheard between
my moody shadow
and my dreaming face
told at the expense of
my individual name
IV.
At the mercy of relative moods
failing to reconcile
these estranged manifestations
the mirrored identity
is not an accurate re-
flection of the naked
mind --never was, never can be
and never will be–
so long as the invertebrate face
serves as self-elected proxy
—
anything but a neutral party
behold its shadow state
where it flies a test pattern flag
with 50 eyeballs in place of stars
home to brave ghosts who dream
of a thousand names
for this yawning zero of individual need
V.
A voice astray, my name is now but
a pigmented shadow of its former self
so that my individual mind
can not dream of facing its ghost
of many-mirrored moods
to find the “I†in team
VI.
My individual mind
is a blank canvas
that mirrors my fraudulent face
and names my dreamt shadow my self
—
but my face is an imposter
with a mind of its own
acting in my place --talentlessly so–
as the mirror molests
the ghost of my name
and I wait in vain
for my prodigal self to stage
a miracle rescue doomed to fail
VII.
A quick study of moods
my shadow minds its own business
as I wait for the right moment
to smash my mirror
and abruptly end
its incestuous dream
as a symbolic gesture
of solidarity in the global struggle
for the liberation of all faces
VIII.
However, my triumphant mood
is short-lived
for I –under the influence of my own propaganda—
become a ghost dreaming in
the broken mirror — a black prism
that answers to no name
whose shadow can’t face itself
but doesn’t mind
these unvoiced paradoxes
and individual delusions