Contraction
By Ravi Shankar
Honest self-scrutiny too easily mutinies,
mutates into false memories
Which find language a receptive host,
Boosted by boastful embellishments.
Self-esteem is raised on wobbly beams,
seeming seen as stuff enough
To fund the hedge of personality,
Though personally, I cannot forget
Whom I have met and somehow wronged,
wrung for a jot of fugitive juice,
Trading some ruse for a blot or two,
Labored to braid from transparent diction
Fiction, quick fix, quixotic fixation.
As the pulse of impulses
Drained through my veins, I tried to live
Twenty lives at once. Now one is plenty.
Copyright Credit: Ravi Shankar, "Contraction" from Instrumentality. Copyright © 2005 by Ravi Shankar. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Source: Instrumentality (Cherry Grove Collections, 2005)