Paul Klee's Analysis of Various Perversities (Photo Credit: http://www.dailyartfix.com)

Analysis of Various Perversities

That Samsung ad sails past on the bus’s flank:
the one of a svelte blonde who embraces a TV
reflecting nothing but her own glazed gaze.

A gender-bent, post-mod Narcissus, she yearns
to kiss herself in the boob-tube of misdirected love,
a vacuum that has sucked out her pith,
then broadcasts it back as an unappeasable God.

At the gym, mirrors imprison me.  I gape at my body,
chase physique’s Holy Grail on a treadmill,
yet never smash through the glass screen of desire.

Is it me or have we all swallowed the kool-aid
of a cult whose bodacious icons sell Self
on every wall?  My own face swells like an angry cloud.
I can’t see what you look like anymore.

*Click on the audio icon below to hear Malcolm Farley read his poem “Analysis of Various Perversities.”