I am a Replica,

traversing through the busy

Metro system at 5 p.m.

        The time of day Pound’s imagery

        comes to the forethought. I walk down,

the marble encrusted steps, into a cart

that will transport me elsewhere.

 

I’m not myself today, I’m never myself.

I don’t know what it means to be myself;

I’ve forgotten how to be anything but a Copy

of society’s Reproductions.

 

Aldous Huxley wrote about the man

I wanted to strive to emulate.

But that was abstract, on some distant reservation,

in a place that permits nothing other then Duplicates.

 

Sometimes I hark back, and speculate what Whitman

would say about this travesty. I’m sure I’ve disappointed

the rebellious Blake, but did he ever have:

 

Despair—a plague that seeps through my pores,

burrowing its way deep into my Platonic blueprint.

     This creature fornicates with my innards, until I’m nothing more then a Facsimile of itself.

 

In the solar eruptions of my thoughts

there are days I fly back and regain a sapling seed

to grow out of the abyss that Plath feigned fear of—oh that adorable oven.

Then I dredge up the putrid truth,

 

          that I’m nothing but an Imitation.