Single Take

This body of mine... I've only seen this thing through a glass dimly. Or on a screen, two-dimensionally. I've never, nor will I ever, have experienced it live, unfiltered, unpixelated, unprocessed.

You have, though. Sometimes you smile because you know I'm inside. I like that. Sometimes you don't. I understand that.

When you don't, is it because you can read as I do? Are you fluent in the language of surgical steel and yellow-ridged craniums? Can you make out the dichotomous standstill? Do they betray my secret struggle? They must.

Alright, then. I'll admit it. I don't know if I'm ready to put away childish things just yet. At times I come close, but stop short, asking, "Will I miss them when I only see them in pictures?"

Can you discern by these fingernails that I'm a worrier, like my mother? These nails have never seen what lies atop the fabled hill. They're confined to their little window, quarantined and allowed no further.

This mock-stubble, can you see it? (Step closer.) The clutter of my mind makes it hard to see the to-do list hanging on the back wall. Two or three weeks ago now I wrote "buy new razors" on that list.

I suppose you see right through these crooked spectacles, too? Okay, yes, like I said, I have a hard time keeping up with the detailed demands of daily life, so if I can pick them up, put the lens back in, bend the frame back into submission, then I can go another day yet without dooming them to the list. Task averted.

See how my left wrist doesn't tell me the time anymore? It just let's me go on and on until I happen by a clock and hear it say that I've lost the luxury of a leisurely pace. I can hear it now.

An abrupt end... unintentional, but fitting I suppose.

Mike's Self Portrait

I am the Viking warrior.
I am a Polish slave.
I am a German worker.
I am a Scottish king.

Through histories fog and misfortune, I have been molded, scolded and folded into this man you see before you. This blond haired, blue eyes, misfit, this lazy ass tumbling, this “I don’t wanna budge” adolescent caught between willy nilly and 80 year old windows to my soul.

I am a conniving thief, I am a miracle, I owe you more, but you wont get it from me. I am mostly lost, yet it’s finally finished, I am done, I am scared, I give up, I stand up, I fight, I am a wavering walking contemptuous contradiction. I will give much, and leave you wanting, I will try hard, yet never will I be enough.

What I want I will not have, what I crave I can not fight for, when I think of me, I think of black and red, I think of white and I think of blue, I am a grayish purple hot rod soon to go out of style.

I am a creek of culmination, I am an estuaries end, I will be used, and I will be be abused, but you’ll never have me, I am confident only when you are not around and when you are I will give you nothing more than ambiguous answers but they will be simultaneously short and to the pricks point.

Look to the sun and you will see me, I am amongst the shadows, I AM close and I am all things to all men forever and then I will be who I want to be, someday I will come together, until then I am broken and in pieces.

Direction for a Self-Portrait

I’d start with a round shape. Well, I guess if we’re going to get fancy, let’s do almond. A Japanese person once told me I had an almond-shaped face. But they’re strange that way, always eating seaweed and bean curd and stuff.

Add some yellowy snarls of hair around that thing. Imperfectly parted and disobedient. Include some commentary from my grandmas while you’re at it – twenty-eight years into this thing called life and they still can’t get over that I have curly hair. Maybe they’re jealous I won’t need a permanent when it’s time for the round-head all women are fated for. Or maybe they’re flipping through the files of their brothers and sisters, in laws and uncles by way of my tresses, remembering which ones had curly hair, too, and how it was in great uncle Gordon’s hair as well. But we don’t talk much about him.

Don’t forget the fixings. Lips that pull over smallish teeth and gargantuan gums, two bluey eyes, a set of ears and an Anglo-Saxon beak. And skin. Sticks of concealer have told me I’m fair, ivory, light cream. I would suggest tying a whitish crayon to a pinkish one to an orangish one and giving the forehead a good scribble. You’ll get the point.

And of course there are the smatterings:

: The mini crater on the seam of my left nostril, once an astoundingly large pimple in tenth grade. My dad called it my twin sister. Mary Simensen and I, in our genius way of prescribing topical remedies, slathered wart remover on it. It burned through my skin – no, I should say it ate through my skin. But I guess it did the job.

: Scar on the bottom of my chin from a tragic roller skating accident.

: Slight circles under eyes.

: Constant flaring of nostrils (if you can do that on paper, that’d be great).

If you want to apply a general feel, I’d bend pieces and lines to the tune of intrigued - maybe an eyebrow up, or something. It’s OK if you can’t erase it. It’s a good idea to me. A life full of questions and interest and pursuit.