My Distinction
If I should need some camouflage, should want to truly blend,
I’d better watch my persiflage and learn not to offend
By wearing last week’s trendy style, my hair too short or long,
Or failing, yet, to reconcile which Party’s Right (or wrong)
To run the government; which church is favored most by God,
How not to leave you in the lurch when I have been a clod,
Appalling with my social gaffes, faux pas and frightful fouls;
I may accept I’m built for laughs, but using the wrong towels
Or forks or traffic lanes, That Word in company unfit—
I hope I don’t seem too absurd as-is, but that’s just it:
My imperfections, my unique design as Me, are such
As might make me appear a freak if I am Me too much.
But, truth be told, while I may work to fit in with the rest,
I hope you won’t think me a jerk for liking myself best!
I will blend in, keep pace, behave, up to a point, to please,
But lest you think me fashion’s slave, I think it a dis-ease
To seek conformity and bow to other people’s rules
When I’m quite nifty anyhow, and others may be fools.
Great, insightful poem, and I love your imagery too, so strong and vibrant!
Thanks! It’s not my most familiar style, perhaps, but every once in a while I get the urge to go boldly graphic with my abstractions. 🙂
Whatever you do, don’t behave – and I had to look up persiflage.
Isn’t that a fun word? I think I first heard it from the American cartoon character Bullwinkle Moose, who with his sidekick Rocket J. “Rocky” the flying Squirrel was known to pause occasionally amid his adventures to recite slightly cockeyed versions of poems and other bits of “airy persiflage”. Don’t worry—despite any attempts at poetic erudition, I am as unlikely as a moose or a flying squirrel to start Behaving anytime in the foreseeable future. 😀