The Man I Am

The Man I Am

As I stand in my yard,
taking the laundry from the
line in the early evening, the
fading sunlight glances

off the satin sheet of my
middle class life and for a
moment the bright surface is a
mirror where I spy a stranger

who looks vaguely like me.
He seems to be a privileged,
old white man but
that's not who I am.

I'm an alien exiled from the
world of my childhood and
my Irish relatives who bead
rosaries, swill whiskey, and

smugly ignore their desperate
escape from the famines of the
old sod. The door to their
domain was slammed shut by

education and a preening
American ambition to be an
international sensation, to
wash my hair with money,

polish my teeth with
gold dust and wear a
silken shirt that shines with
success. Yes, I want to be

a shimmering monument
to dreams fulfilled but
that hasn't happened and I
find I'm a man confined to the

backwaters of the future and the
side streets of the present—
a feral prowler searching the
past for clues and explanations

while I await a sunrise
that may never come
and shiver in the cold,
commercial night of this

corrupt, carnivorous, capitalist
beast that deludes itself it's the
home of the brave and the
land of the free, the last,

best hope of mankind as the
dispossessed load their
guns and wait patiently
for the attack to begin.