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I am Deviant
I am deviant.
I dress in flowers and lace.
I am deviant.
I decline to run the race.
I am deviant.
I love strangers and turn on friends.
I am deviant.
I don't paint false feelings on my face.
I run out of rhymes
and lunge at the moon.
I swallow rain water
and leave you no trace.
I am deviant.
I work for no one. I play my own pipe.
I am deviant.
My words are sharply etched into diamonds, alone,
and I drop them into the murky sea
to scatter and search.
I'm worthless and priceless and so out of place.
I'm jobless and nameless and easy to erase.
I stare down the alley where I said I would sit.
The seat I'd prepared has been heavily hit
with another man's weight. If I change my mind
I'm too late.
So I wander alone towards an uninhabited space.
I am deviant.
I live between poetry and grace.
-Betina Hershey, 9/2000