Gauzy Friends And Youth Poem by Lonnie Hicks

Add to me slithered hope
lather on time telescoped:
I aspire to grow
larger than I am.

Piece together small achievements;
test my dreams against cubicle worlds
and gauzy friends
shadow boxing.

I cannot yet define who I am
so I invent pieces of me
to fill in the gaps reality leaves
in between
traces of my apartment life.

How can I mature
in these panoplies
where I never see
experience full-scoped?

Fragmented life
in shattered pieces
distend the human mind.

If failures and hopes
are not mine
and only Similes of same

then my life is not my own,
experience itself interstitial.

Some days,
I suffice
to queue
and wait to be-
imagining that
I am becoming
the am
I’m currently not.

But in all this
I can see
I’ll breech the abyss-

dreams my sturdy bridge;
til that day I am whom

I used to dream
I’d be.