I used to write my name in color (2006)

i used to write my name
in
unyielding rainbows
and bubble letters
and italics
and with accents
until the crispness of the page
rebuked my itinerant soul
and so I acclimated
to blacks and blues

i color my my dreams in a lisping
rain
glassy pools of purple
red and blue
hues sashay through
rivers of wind
and end
at
shining skin
on a blackened concrete stage

i am an empire
in utter ruin
that won't strike back
running
gunning
finding myself in lost spaces
loosing my self
in familiar names
one in all,
all in the same

tired of changing a locked game

freeze frame
i'm in motion
high tide inside a still ocean
trying to remember from which way I came
i reclaim my
lost
but loving mind
beside the road
where children eat pickles
and pick poppies
and wonder
when why we
run so fast

How did i forget
the source of my strength?
Was it when i laid by the side of the road
to take a drink in an oasis
Or was it when I closed myself off to the possibility
of infinite
ability

or was it when I
pulled a new
practical, smoothly leaded
pencil
pointed it into space
and wrote my name
in gray
instead
of color?