What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (15)

15

That was never me,
see those kids stumbling around Hollywood streets,
aimless and aroused, stimulated by all the lights,
all the madness, all the openness, all the first nights of freedom;
that was never me.

But I was always there,
quaking and clamoring,
awkward, awake, aware of everything,
my life was pages turning on my bedroom ceiling.

So I was there, I've stumbled with the best of them,
I've seen the nights and quenched the moments,
been there and bellowed and rehearsed.
The moments weren't mine,
but the fervor of the nights always came back to me,
the scared straight, the sensation,
the teal sky above the yellow lights, all shimmering,
all rotating and blending,
the world all alive and blinking;
all from the safety of soft sheets and my blank bedroom ceiling.

That was never me,
but I was always there.
And so I am.