My Ridiculous Suit

In the spotlight, in my gift, I blushed
and squirmed and stammered. Mumbled
out a few choked words. Failed
to dance. The audience still and hushed,
then glancing, embarrassed, as I failed
to shine.

How did I, of all people, open this box,
wrapped in red foil, big and heavy?
Unfurl this shining suit of charisma
and silver words, and the golden mean?
So obvious as it waterfell from my
raised hands to the floor
that it was not for me.
It would never fit. I would never
grow into it.

So plain to my gathered family
that its lavish fabric, it borders well embroidered,
its fine cut were meant for another.
A prince, maybe. A brilliant golden godling.
Only prodigy could fill it.
But I put it on. I rolled up the cuffs.
I paired it with sneakers and a toolbelt.
Everywhere I went heads turned.
People laughed at me.

Later, when I was too old for playacting,
people shook their heads. They said I was crazy.
I've never grown into it. I am plain
and now broken, but it is still brilliant and regal.
I am so embarrassed.
I am squandering it.
The spotlight follows me, expecting a show.
Everyone wants the prince's favor, the godling's blessing,
but I want to crawl under a rock. Or run for the hills.
I want sun on my skin. I am a good carpenter.
And I like working in the restaurant a couple nights a week.
I like to walk in the desert.
Back, back, back... An irretrievable moment
of switched labels.
My jeans and flannel given to some beautiful,
brilliant, godlike boy, now crushed by
stultifying labor, and his ridiculous golden suit
sent to me, who craves aloneness, and making and
fixing things, and to watch and listen and drink beer, and
have a kind wife in a little house in the trees.
A friend calls me the "blueblood redneck",
mistaking my silver tongue for good breeding.
I was sharpening a chainsaw when he said that.

How can a windfall make such misery?
I have a very gentle heart.
It is still so open, even in my middle age,
that I cry when I miss my children.
I am full of doubt.
I know the world through my hands.
But people see me as arrogant, in my
big, regal suit.
I slouch, but they see me strutting.
I'm shy, but they see me preening.
When I read, which I do for pleasure and instruction,
they see an aloof intellectus
living the life of the mind.

The mind gives me great trouble
because I think, of course, with the great
perfect words that belong to that poor beautiful brilliant
laborer, who thinks in mine.
He must sometimes wonder, dimly,
through the brown scrim
of the words that are rightly mine,
why his life is so dreary.
Why he has these unmanly urges to the spotlight,
to sing and declaim,
to take applause,
to be adored and garnered,
to shine.
And I hold this pen with fingers cracked and calloused
from carpentry and dishwashing, trying
to escape architecture and theory
and the ideal of the perfect essay,
the heady burgundies,
the endowed chair,
the witty comrades that should, supposedly, be mine.

God, if you're up there, or Santa Claus -giver of gifts-
take from me this finery.
Leave me alone. Let me be.
My mind is close to breaking.
My open heart too flawless and pained.
Get thee hence, or bring me my flannel and jeans.
You've messed with me since I was a boy.
I am so sad and tired, so full of love.
So disappointing. I am embarrassed.
And in the night I long to be free
of this ridiculous suit.