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.

Autophagy

I am reminded of a story I read when I was a kid
that I suppose is true
about an octopus that was kept in a tank
inside of a place where they observe
animals and their behavior
(not just an aquarium)

and I am reminded of the pictures in my head
as I read about the creature
how I imagined a black room with black painted walls
(I don't know why)
and that the tank was bare

and inside there is a small octopus, eight armed, bumpy, eyes blinking inside a tank.
there are many such tanks.

The story I read was about how smart the octopus is.
An octopus can learn to do something very clever by watching another octopus do that thing.
It can learn from observation
But they can become bored.

They can become depressed.
I think this is why I imagined a black room and an empty tank, glass walls, glass bottom
and only a glass jar to hide in.
I imagined an alien place for the octopus
I imagined its almost human eyes staring out of a world of glass in a room that was black
and I think I could see how it could feel sad
(they can change their colors with how they feel, too, but I did not imagine the color of a
sad octopus)

A bored octopus, the book wrote, can kill itself.
It has a parrot's beak.
It tears its own arms off and eats itself, destroying itself

I remember the word: autophagy
instead of suicide