My infant sorrow persists in these, my senior years
And I am not a fiend hid in a cloud
Though persistent, insistent, sinister powers that be
Tell me to be, that I am that fiend
And only my acceptance will disburse the cloud
But I am not helpless, naked; no longer piping loud
Though when I was, I was unable to sulk upon my mother’s breast
I didn’t know how to struggle against my swaddling bands
Nor that I had to, as I have to now, still, yet, in these my senior years
The tragedy written for me to play was not play
For me but was for the supporting cast
And their comedy found me the butt of every asinine joke
No. Mirth was not mine, is not mine still
My bands swaddle not, did not swaddle, do but stifle, did stifle
Yet the author, the omnipotent author, with every reason to know better, composes
A hackneyed part so derivative that scholars reprise the same,
The tired character in their discipline and the same scholars now think
The schizophrenogenic mother a fiction but I rethink the same
The fictive character of that postulate, that a mother would
Manifest upon this helpless, naked infant—
This child of bipolar, or schizoaffective disorder
Writ deep in Virginia Satir’s suppressed family secret
Satiric family, satire of a family, familiar statistics
A production in a late-night rehearsal
Of a malevolent plot the leading lady’s desperate
Protagonist on strike; the stage lights dim
Darkness disburses out in the theater’s illuminated exit rows
The show is over, makeup sanitized off the face of reason
Outside, in the light of day, naked realization
Identifying a self-defining moment of truth, defying, momentous truth:
I am not that I am,
Not that I am I was made to be
That problem child I am not
I will be what I will to be
What I am, I am me
I am my identity, my me
What I am is what I am
I say loud:
I am I
I say loud:
I am me
My me
Identity
I am
I
David Fekete 