[an Honors American Literature assignment in the style of Walt Whitman...in the context of me.]
My soul is a blank sheet of paper,
100% recycled and folded numerous times.
I struggle to begin a memoir,
To color outside the lines.
I rhyme accidentally.
I prepare felt-tip markers, pastels, finger paints, and fountain pens
For futile attempts to plaster said canvas
With vivid life and unadulterated emotion.
I stay away from computers and ignore pencils completely,
Favoring typewriters, Sharpies, tattoos, scars, and the notion that change is permanent.
My soul is split among many
Ideas, people, places, things, and their descriptors.
I stand taller than my mother, shorter than my sister, and against world hunger.
I stand, cheering, for victorious baseball teams, Academy Award winners,
And graduation’s proximity.
I stand somewhere between the stars and the sky.
A light rain drip, drip, drips from a benevolent sunrise,
Painting familiar faces with the pinks and oranges
Of a new day’s hope.
Strangers’ faces sparkle simultaneously as students’ smiles
Greet them graciously,
Pass them peacefully,
Confuse them completely.
My soul is enamored with compassion.
Is altruism dead?
Donors gain a cure,
A T-shirt.
Volunteers log new homes,
Service hours.
Tutors accumulate pupils,
Credentials.
Thrift store contributors pass on clothing,
Clutter.
Selflessness is sacred, sworn off by swindling somebodies.
My soul is eternal.
After raising a double major from grade point ashes,
Raising salaries as Editor in Chief,
Raising four children
And an herb garden,
I will be pulled from my preserved pedestal
By a crippling yet curable illness --
Cured with the help of my (by then) monthly donations to a worthy pharmaceutical acronym.
Having benefited from these final acts of benevolence,
I will prove that altruism can die
At the hands of old life found.
My soul, having become a scarred and tattooed, striped and tainted sheet of paper
Will withdraw from its authored -- though flawed -- cautioned, borrowed body
Beneath the sunset’s song.
