I was Icarus

with double-edged wings

once upon a time.

The dreamer’s big eyes,

full of flames and longing,

the impetuous nature,

the jazz of my soaring,

all of it

defined me

as the blaring antithesis

to my dad’s son-proofed

set of lockbox rules.

But I got into the groove, boy,

you know I did,

and I gleefully sacrificed my youth

to the incandescent god of cosmic disco

and crapshoots, the one that feeds voraciously

on the hustling of the young, on the ripening

vocabulary of their roots, and living lexicon.

As the legend goes,

I was gobbled up

and spit back into the sea

as singed feathers

and unfulfilled dreams.

My memories, or rather want of memories,

became gurgling pods of sea-foam,

and I became a rote eulogy

on the collective lips

of a conscripted pantheon.

Despite the way

in which it’s been told,

the residual gist of my legend,

there is no moral to be drawn

from my story,

not really.

The moral

is the afterthought,

the wearied tack-on,

it is my father’s noble, outstretched hand

still trying to reach me,

to hold me.

I guess what I’m trying to say is–

I was Icarus

with double-edged wings

once upon a time,

and the claims of my legend

were shaped by a Sun

that deals in fate and destiny,

not meanings,

and I, the boy formerly known as Icarus,

have gotten to live a hundred thousand lives

as a star in a show with a variable script,

and no apparent ending.

(Image by Henri Matisse)