Confessions of a Body Thief
CONFESSIONS OF A BODY THIEF
To take a stranger’s mind
and wear a stranger’s face,
to step into another’s flesh
and claim a life in toto,
was a talent I discovered
at a raw and tender age,
when the world itself was
changing in unexpected ways.
Youth was in rebellion.
Generations ripped apart.
A war on foreign shores
and injustice on our own
soon led to cries of protest
and bloodshed in the streets.
Consciousness expanded like
a roiling mushroom cloud.
Those who offered answers
said it had to do with love
Amidst the fervor and the rage
I could have any life I chose,
from a pompous politician
feeding on the masses’ needs,
riding high in limousines,
to a rail-thin rock idol
prancing on a concert stage
with women in the wings.
Flush with youthful vigor,
a burgeoning libido,
and a head full of ideals,
I promptly chose the latter
without a shade of doubt.
Wielding my axe like a pen,
and often like a sword,
I defined a shaggy credo,
my generation’s song.
With the lyrics of another
I felt the wild exultation
of ovation upon ovation
and the instant adulation
that music can engender.
I lived my life so rapidly,
losing track of night and day,
the drugs within my veins,
time bunched and crushed
together like the jackknifed
cars of a derailing train.
When my body overdosed
I abandoned its dying shell.
After one or two false starts
I settled on my second host.
I became a cybernetic genius,
worked for IBM and Rand.
I calculated decimal points
to infinity and back again.
I’d never mastered logic
and never cared for math,
but I had another’s brain
and a Ph. D. from M. I. T.
to think in algorithms
and converse with binary.
Abstract numbers galled
so I pursued the real sort,
the kind with dollar signs
that can buy a luxury yacht
to sail on the Côte d’Azur.
I was a Wall Street whiz kid,
a black belt of the exchange,
trading stocks and debentures
until I made a hundred million.
Then the junk-bond scandal hit,
and for the novelty alone
I spent a year in prison.
Once I surfaced as a woman,
more seductive than sin itself.
I learned what men will do
for the lust that they call love.
I learned how they’ll compete
like fierce animals in heat
to possess a surface beauty
and caress a shapely thigh,
with no interest or concern
for whatever lies beneath.
I became a different woman
and fought for women’s rights.
I battled like a termagant
with overblown executives
for an equal scale of pay,
for acceptance and promotion
on the corporation ladder
and all that should be mine.
The end result of this was
I soon became another man.
I’ve been brown and black
and white and yellow,
and all the shades between.
I’ve toiled stooped and sweaty
through the sun-baked fields.
I’ve sat in the awning’s shade,
with a cool drink by my arm,
sporting an evil overseer’s grin.
I’ve penned a best-selling novel
and composed a symphony.
Like a chameleon understudy
I have played most any part
as I moved across the stage
of this metamorphic age,
yet all of it soon paled
without my own identity.
I’ve cruised and skimmed
along the skin of things
like a surfer on a wave,
a rock skipping across a lake,
or a raindrop on a window
that reflects the room beyond
but can never find a passage
through the surface of the pane.
I’ve looked into the mirror
but never past my eyes.
I’ve only known my ego,
its desires and its needs,
the ocean’s tidal roar
that belies the silent deep.
My future now stands open
like an endless avenue,
for every time I start to age
I seize on youth once more.
Yet is it worth the trouble
to keep changing hats and coats,
not in rhythm with the seasons,
just to please my petty whims,
when my soul is lost forever
in the shuffling and the rippling
of a hundred different skins?
If there is a kind of answer
that has to do with love,
if consciousness can change
and the world can follow suit,
I am not the one to judge.
I have stolen other lives.
I’ve ravaged mind and limb.
I have left my spirit far behind
and forsaken my own name.
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First appeared as a signed, limited edition broadside (Talisman)