Contraction

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.

riverrun