Contradictions

I have hidden patience and a room with a view

I sing like a grackle but I have a clear mind

I’m a mass of intuition but I can’t see the road for the stars

I sit with bare feet and too-high heels in the dirt

I’m spring-loaded, a snake waiting to strike

My lips are wired with safety pins, and my step is fractured

So nice to come back when you never knew you were lost

I give evidence of what I’m not

I color between the skies

I’m drowning in your love, but it’s icy cold

I’m feminizing, socializing, missing perfection

I’m hard of hearing but turn on like a phonograph

I have train-ticket posture and a violent smile

I count pennies and seek thimbles in the dark

My hair is wet and my shoes are on backwards

I creep like a gecko and cast spells on the room

I’m all slinky and stumbling, with a cast-iron heart

I don’t play checkers and I feel with my eyes

I have tattered lace curtains and dog-collar charm

I explode like a firecracker and I’m hungry for answers

I herd sheep and steal languages made for someone else

I’m frightened by faith and confused all over again

I read thesauruses and paint with my mind in a trance

I drink far too much coffee for someone my height

I listen to things that don’t exist in the daylight

I believe in God when it comes in the form of beauty

And pray for those with more goodness than myself

And shadow the feet of isolation, but get over it

I’m under a moonbeam and inside the earth

I float above the clouds at my convenience

I wait for the toothfairy and confuse it with deliverance

I obsess in a foreign tongue that I speak fluently

I write for the children in a way only grown-ups understand

I delve into glitter and delight in the alien fruit

I search for the strong things that have Venus’ touch

I keep hidden truths under my supervision

I photograph when it strikes my fancy, and light a match

The darkness is already cursed

I’m searching for love and denying its existence

I’ve been chasing a ghost for most of my life

And chopping daisies with a tin axe rusted over

I believe in fairy tales, and make up my own

I’m often heard singing in my peculiar voice

About things better than myself, validated by history

I change like a stopwatch and clean everybody’s clock

I’m sitting and waiting for the world to rewind

I don’t really have much of a choice anymore

I like pretty, smart little things that carry an accent

That sit like statues and have a trigger mechanism

I fall over tweed and leap at bleeding dictionaries

I’m too innocent and cynical, too angry and pure

Showering others in love I don’t feel I deserve

I think too much about the wrong things

I’m anal-retentive and cool as a cucumber

I mock the ones I’m trying to help, and dwell in hypocrisy

I’m learning to drift with the tide, and hoping it will go the other way

I don’t play well with others; I revel in change

I pose like a sculpture and display knowledge like a peacock

I go underground and travel through imaginary mazes

I place myself in Cinderella’s dainty slippers

And smile through gritted teeth, walking on glass shards

I like Max Factor draped on a Y chromosome

I try to be human but collapse from the pressure

I hate to lie to everyone excepting myself

I catch madness in a butterfly net and talk to myself in my sleep

I have to learn moderation and stop carving in trees

See the ordinary behind the immaculate image

And cease lecturing others in alphabet terms