bright lights, big city

so rough my skin hurts:

I am not waiting to be discovered
no bright lights could make me any more
real
than I already am.
The New World was here long before European’s
saw fit to draw it into maps
and the Old Testament would have happened whether
or not anyone wrote it down
so I don’t need anyone to bear witness to
this
to validate my existence.
I am living my life whether or not you are watching
and I can’t stop writing it down
so I really don’t need you to tell me that I’ve arrived.

J. Alfred Prufrock measured his
life in coffee spoons
but I don’t use spoons in my coffee, I add the
milk first
so I measure my life in…
cigarette breaks
missed sunsets
7 day intervals between you and you
showers
teeth brushing
I count stairs
sometimes steps between my stoop
and the T, call it OCD
and yeah, I’ll admit, sometimes I count the newspaper clippings
I don’t throw anything away
I am carefully cataloguing my life
because I refuse to let anyone take me out of context.

I don’t need a publicist
a manager
or an agent
to speak on my behalf:
I never shut up.
And I grew up knowing that
I could be whatever I wanted
and yeah, I’m still figuring out
that’s a pretty long list
and I don’t know when the hell
I plan on growing up, so I don’t
think it really matters that much.

So yeah, maybe someone will offer me a job
maybe someone someday will produce one of my plays
put me in a magazine
on a TV screen
But you can’t discover me.
You can’t find me
I’m not lost.

~ by caralisapowers on February 21, 2007.