Mirror Images

If I'm the mirror and you're the image

then what's the secret between the two,

these 'me's and 'you's, how many can there be?

Oh, I don't mind all that around the place,

as long as you keep it

well away from me.

I've begun to regret that we ever met

between the dimensions.

It gets such a strain to pretend that the change

is anything but cheap...

with your infant pique and your angst pretensions

sometimes you act like a creep.

And now I'm standing in the corner,

looking at the room and the furniture

in cheap imitation of alienation and grief.

And now we're going to the kitchen,

fix ourselves a drink and a cigarette,

getting no closer to being the joker or thief.

Still, I reflect, this nervous wreck

who stands before me can see as well,

can surely tell that he's not yet free;

he can turn aside, but can no more ignore me

than know which one of us is he,

than tell what we are going to be,

than know which one of us is me.

And now we're going to the kitchen,

fix ourselves a drink and a cigarette,

getting no closer to being the joker or thief.

These mirror images,

these mirror images

won't stay, go away, are no help.

In these mirror images of myself

there are no secrets.