Great is Imitation

after Walt Whitman

Great are the myths…I too delight in them

Great are Icarus and Orpheus…I look back and accept them

Great are the risen and the deflated, their wills, posters, cutouts, calendars, and drafts.

Great is imitation! Great is mirage! I am their follower,

Helmsmen of illusion, choose your craft…where you sail I sail,

Yours is the stone in my kidney…yours is the cat at my tongue

….yet in you I have blind faith.

Great are those who aren’t but try to be,

Great is the prosthetic, made to mimic the inimitable,

Great is the artificial, the synthetic, the mime

the derivative, the bluff, the boast, the born deceiver

the one pair deck that calls and never folds.

I cut the puzzle, separate the continents, design the joint,

and yet I always drag the pieces into place.

I stand to supplement, I sit to bolster,

I stretch in the shadows and hope the sun sees me,

because I love the light but fear the burn.

Enrapture me with your oasis! and let me swallow the sand

But you ask, won’t the hot sand scald my insides?

Why do I fear the sunburn but bear the blister?

Do you call that a paradox? It certainly is one.

I sing to the chrysalis…I pray the formless goo between my fingers hears me

I wished for a monarch…out came a viceroy.

Great is the model, and equally great is the mimicry…great is the advance, and equally great the attempt.

So! To the rat race:

I chase and resent you, rhapsodize and lament you, and I whine your name just to taste the sour-sweetness of your disappointment on my tongue.

So I carve commutes and I heave bells,

I fold spines and I jam time.

I defer.