“I Hallucinate my Desire”
–Roland Barthes
It was not her,
But the cliché
He clothed her in
With which he fell
In love; it was
She he wanted
To be, not himself—
The staid mockery,
An easy fool
To be displaced.
Caught in his own
Clichés as well
As others, he said
Too much too soon,
Or too little too late;
As if some other
Past could be
Rewritten into
An iteration of all
He could not become.
(June 1, 2017)
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