You, rehearsed cynic at 18, lamented about modern poetry. 

‘Not everything is like something else.’ 

No, but too naive to omit

The unbearable likeness of your being. 

A facsimile of a facsimile,

A patchwork hand-sewn man with hidden seams, 

An ego built on historicity and a haircut.

You’re the fate met by all romantics, 

A performance artist constantly at work, 

Constantly in the darkness of smoke and mirrors:

A bad caricature, a funhouse of false idols, 

A five-string guitar mimicking sacred chords.

You, a man, a pseudo-romantic-intellectual, 

Terrified of aloneness late in the evening,

The faded stock-image of a modern Casanova

Willingly blind to all the days 

That you choose to ignore.

‘Not everything is like something else.’

––You, shackled to the scaffold of similarity. 

Words by Amiee Dixson. Art by Imogen Edmundson.