Outsidering

I always thought it was a sibling
who was the contrarian. It turns
out that I am contrary. I have always
held airy and aloof when I felt like I
was close to home. More air for the
home fire, more heat. I meet me and
I see fraud and waste and gaudy cruelty. 
I want to modify. I fail to embody the
codified life that I could walk into 
and through. It's a lonely thing,
to make one self a lone. All these
split port manteaus, failing to 
concatenate, falling down to
the next line, like spines without
their key ingredients. Discless
brakes, riskless fakes, mistless
lakes. Each naked, swinging like
a fist, failing the briskness test,
hypothermic at the first sign
of cold. I walked out of line
and stayed there. It's not 
really a there, there are 
lines everywhere. It's 
a pretend nowhere 
where I find my
self. It's theater,
a bleak theater,
filled with empty
seats. Lights, broken
as the day they were
shorn. Sheep, silent
as the day before they
were torn from their
ewes. You and I could
be we. If I find me
no longer me. Or some
thing less dramatic. It 
was not traumatic, this
so far. It is only so
far. The arc of this
tar is forward. For 
words are laid out
on the asphalt
and they say
lanes merge.