I always want to be with somebody else.
Imagine then, my shock and surprise,
When somebody else was you,
Your face, your smile, your eyes,
Your body, your breathing, just you,
Which was unusual, and you made me happy, too.
From early on, I was like this—
The prettiest, unreachable, introvert is the one I wanted to kiss—
Blame my artistic nature; I judged with my eye—
I loved the pretty who silently walked by.
And conversation with friends had to be about love
Or art, or the philosophy of desire for the highest things above.
But there were terrible drawbacks. I was nothing special.
I was healthy, but I was not beautiful, to love those who were beautiful,
And I understood that being like I was, was close to being a jerk.
A snob with a wandering eye,
Yet ordinary and shy.
How, I thought, could I make that work?
I chose aesthetics. Or, aesthetics chose me.
I understood that, too.
I didn’t blame myself for who I was, I knew
I was fated to be an artist, and to long
For unreachable beauty—I knew this wasn’t easy, but I knew it wasn’t wrong.
So I always wanted to be with somebody else,
And felt uneasy socially
And pursued poetry madly and sadly, willingly and chillingly,
Cold in my hot pursuit
For what was coldly beautiful—burning in ice—oh, wasn’t I astute?
I longed for the beautiful, and at times came close to the cute,
But life was not easy, because life was not enough,
And my life was a dream, because I was guided by ideals,
And it was a miracle I survived; I worked, I loved, I ate meals.
I won’t bother you with the details of my bookstore life,
My urban dreams and pleasures, children, wife.
I always wanted to be with somebody else,
Until you—but you were a punishment, the somebody else who finally came,
Because you left me, and broke my heart, so you were more of the same—
But you revealed to me who that somebody else was: it was me.
I was the one I wanted—pursuing artistic fame.