now this

 This (selfie) photo was taken in 2022. I played around with it and changed the colors. 

from ROAD TRIPS

 CODA

This life, 

Lived like a dream through stained glass

In a hazy deciduous forest alone among strangers.

I am the most strange, I am the different outsider:

Feeling like a vacuous soul on an endless ride 

On a forgotten Ferris wheel, high and low, low 

And higher but waiting and left and dropped at the low.

The ride is always on endless bizarre looping roads 

Upon which all unfamiliar sights become visible as 

Mysterious grey sculptures in the rear view mirror.

My insides are weary from traveling through seasons like a 

Naked Amnesiac: the past remembered and easily forgotten.

The ghosts of ancestors are speaking through dense fog,

Cutting through this bittersweet life through which I 

Involuntarily passed without my written consent making

My passages all a crime, an extreme felony.

In time I sat perched all alone seeing possibilities but 

Owning disappointments during touches by many who 

Broke my damaged parts and stole my wail, my shouts

My distressed chiseled shadows and my pale scratched echoes.

This life is now mostly all behind me pushing me to the 

Now where I stand on a precipice not sure which way to go:

To the detour or the curve in the road or a stop sign or

Drive to the dead end or move miles away and live the 

Same way in the same life: this red lighted life. 

And as frightening as the journey has been during 

The vivid Technicolor scenes and after midnights in film noir 

In all the pain and anguish and panic… 

All I really want, all for which I long

Is to stay longer, to remain, and not leave this place.  

--- Marjorie J. Levine