Private Eye

Lowly servant of the highest want,

private spy of the collective eye,

our paths cross suspiciously well.

Whomsoever tried to pass the rule,

paid fate its toll, unknowing.

I give you compliance and you give me feeling,

enough that I may taste the spit of judgement

and call my thirst obedience.

That I may confess to feeling

more than my portion,

at times.

To know that I am in your reach,

count me proper,

in the pecking order.

If ever I stray from participation,

thou art with me,

perched upon the drywall of emptiness,

reminding me that your absence is the truest of evil.

Your approval far fairer than any polished surface.

My image once pleased the grooves of your hand.

A being that longed for the acceptance,

of claiming you,

to sweeten the taboo,

of denial.

Who did I become in the age of the mirror?

Indifference with a face,

rippling in the glass?

Wanting out of the hunger for either/or.

The biparous circus of normalcy and depravity.

The porn of meaning.

Starve me into withdrawal.

The juror on the wall,

rubbing together its tiny hands,

deliberating.

Until I am no longer nutrition,

to the appetite of the organism.

Until identity is no longer a ransom,

paid in loaned faces.