A Picture Of Me Poem by RIC BASTASA

i can easily draw
myself
if i have a pencil and a paper
i could have easily given you a picture of me,
i have the eyes of a Chinese immigrant
my eyelids thicker than the bush that
you always trim along the fence
my lips are thin like the petals
of a rose
some men mistake them
for that of a woman's
but that will be so much of a misleading
fact like the direction of the road
that they changed days ago
some visitors have gone astray.
i am still in the middle of this journey
so my cheeks are smooth with only a few
scratches like the one that you see
when the cat scratches the wall
of the kitchen when it gets hungry
and shouts and yet you do not really mind at all.
my face is black and white
nothing gray
there is no color like a landscape of
fields and pathways.
you have seen me once but you never recognize
me because you relied more on the picture i had
on the poems that you read.
i like to see myself
less the distortions of the modern abstract art.
But i am more of the Gothic
Grecian-roman eclectic type.
You see you want to put me as a portrait in the canvass
like what everyone wants.

Look, look carefully, finally this is the portrait of me.
A river.You dip your finger in my eyes.
It is cold and it is passing like the ordinary wind
one boring day.