“You’re a bit of a closet hippie,
aren’t you?” she knowingly asked,
and I keenly delighted in the concept.
“Oh yes, I am a closet many things,
dully predictable in my malicious intent
sparing you the embarrassing details,” I confessed.
I am a proudly bitter liberal
who deeply longs for conservative stability
and something approaching warm tradition.
I expound upon Shakespeare
and salivate over unrestrained cummings,
yet miss my heady days reading comic books.
Once deemed a semi-devout Muslim
by some, I harbor devotion to Brighid
while blissfully exalting the tallest of trees.
By day I am a severe academic
too timid to partake of true passion,
yet pen romance novels in the dark of night.
Beneath the skin of this American,
an alcoholic Scotsman sleeps one off
while fatuously dreaming of conquering England.
The bulk of my identity crouches
excitedly in a bare unadorned closet
tight and erect, sniffing musk-scented oils.
The perpetually unknown core of me
screams for attention in throaty whispers
yet trembles that I might actually get caught.
My closet is a palace of fantasies,
perversely composed by Sigmund Freud
while disappointed Jung looks on in despair.
George Ellington 