Selections from the Cultural Chameleon

Isn't she beautiful?

Mom, she looks like a doll!

Is that really the color of your hair?

A picture painted without flaw

A blank canvas beneath

Such time, such effort, such energy,
such utter devotion

Dedicated to the creation of a mask of perfection

Dedicated to the creation of an illusion

Of what never was nor could ever be

A kabuki mask created and perfectly placed

No one can see the turmoil the angst the passion the intensity

Lying just beneath the surface

You remind me of a movie star!

You must be a model!

Where did you get that gorgeous outfit?

You have a fabulous figure!

A fat, plain, stuttering, shy little girl

stumbles and builds and hides behind a carefully built wall…

alone…

No more acorns can be hurled at her now

No more stoning of one found so ugly that heads turned away in disgust

No more taunts or insults that re-open painful wounds 

that bleed slowly
ever so slowly

No more pig snorts mixed with laughter behind her back

that seem to echo for an eternity

So she runs and runs and runs and runs and runs and runs and runs and runs and runs...

Finally disappearing 

from everyone
from everywhere
from everything

From even herself

---Just silence and the erratic beating of an imperfect, plain, fragile heart---

Then a small voice,
a little girl’s voice

Not a voice.... more like an echo of a little girl’s voice in a deep dark cave

“Am I real, do I even exist?

If everyone is so convinced that

I am what I appear to be...

Have I really become the illusion I've created?

If so, then why can I not silence 

these deafening piercing primal screams 

of pain that keeps echoing in my head?”

(Selections from the Cultural Chameleon 1992, amended 2008)