I Am a Contradiction
I think in ways unknown to me:
flashing images, colors,
sporadic flying words, objects.
Letters grin at me instead of familiar faces.
Today I am inclined
to succumb,
to partake of
the mundane existence that is me.
Today I am mute and listen,
and contradict myself through silence.
And tomorrow I shall refuse reality.
Tomorrow I shall yell to the world,
scour the depths of my mind,
purge myself of prior thoughts,
and contradict myself through words.
My mind contradicts my soul;
I slumber in wake consciousness,
I run in my dreams,
I seem unable to control my steps,
yet I do not cut off my feet.
I am a contradiction
for reasons beyond my reasoning.
Joseph Ellison Brockway is an interestingly strange and funny bilingual poet and translator. He is a Spanish professor at Mountain View College in Dallas, TX, and he’s currently experimenting with poems that explore the human psyche and new ways to manipulate language in order to expose the uncanny side of the human circus called life. Joseph is also working on his Ph.D. in Studies of Literature and Translation at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is in the process of translating the poems of various Puerto Rican poets as part of his work.
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Cover photo: Erin Hayden erinhayden.tumblr.com