Kaleidoscope, by Freddy Niagara Fonseca

BY FREDDY NIAGARA FONSECA

We have all nursed illusions: give us the right ones!
And all of us dream Dreams: let us dream bright ones!–Joe Ruggier

I’m a man of many shards
and, unless seen together in
all of its fractured wonder,
as incomplete as any.

One flick of the hand and
I turn into something new al-
together, leaving what’s
old and gone, changed forever.

My fragmentation negates
the way I used to be, and there’s
an unseen rift I cannot touch
behind these splinters of deceit.

Numerous facets shift and just
resist fully falling into place,
except for this flaky, shattered
jumble of lights lacking scope.

And yet my flickering purples,
yellows, and other clueless
colors impulsively glimmer even at
night like stars, scattered and all.

Held against the sun or a nearby
lamp, I quickly tend to appear
what I must have been before:
poised, light, and all in one piece.

© 2003 Freddy Niagara Fonseca
First printed in 2004 in The Neovictorian/Cochlea