Saturday, August 24, 2013

I identify with my heroes

I identify with Oscar Wilde
not because of his wit or his style
which I do not have

I identify
because I feel his journey
of discovery

I know how it is to reject
the self that
you see reflected 

I identify with his attempts
in looking to cure to hide
pretending he wasn't as he was

and how he accepted the
self before him and embraced it
completely and utterly

with abandon that
destroyed
everything around him

Oscar's bravery now another note
in a biography
with a torn cover on a shelf

I identify with Nicola Tesla
not because of his genius

I am not an engineer or a scientist

I identify
because I have believed in things
that are larger than myself

I believe in the
goodness that is inside of
people everywhere

I too, would sell
my patents, rush onward
hope others see

the seeds of hope inside of me
as I build a tower on a mountain
to harness megawatts of energy

Nicola remembered,
eventually, as an old man
who fed the pigeons in the park

Eclipsed by Edison
forgotten by those who
plug into his genius daily

I identify with Ludwig van Beethoven
not because of music
(my ear is tin)

I identify
with his constant determination
against everything that defied him

an ugly, short man
with a quick temper
difficult to please

a terrible stand-in parent
a presumed misanthrope
who loved macaroni and Goethe’s poetry

who imagined strange life
on other planets and symphonies
in birdsong

I identify with his hope
with his defiance against
lords and encroaching silence

that even in the end,
he raised his fist,
undefeated.

I hold them close
gather them in
whisper that I will remember

the way they fell
the way they didn't fall
the ways they were human.