sorting it out today, wondering
how much of what I have believed
about myself and who I am
is so much plastic wood

I fell in love early with “assume a virtue if you have it not”
assume a story if it works
assume a face that bears your chosen hue
assume there are those who won’t look past it

but somewhere in my true wood
there are knots and burrs
and I can’t veneer them enough
to leave no lumps in my surface

even when I dare to touch
the places I suspect they are
I can kid myself into the thought
that it’s my fingers that are suspect

but the ripples I refuse to feel
are there even if I cannot admit
that they are — all those years of covering
all those years of making it up as I went

and when the day comes to strip away
the last pieces of the fake decor
what will I say to myself when I look at the gnarling
the burls and the wormholes and the split grain?

will I say then i was a beautiful man
or will I despair and wail as I light a match
assume the peak of a pyre I should have built long ago
to watch myself fall in upon myself

instead of assuming that a life of wounds and scars
was less valuable than a life of obvious subterfuge?
will I tell myself I was dead either way
and let the wreckage show at last?