Ego Lamps

A new product to titillate the imagination,
a flashy ad with Broadway lights and sugar-coated
promises, an enticing photo in The Sun, (my A.M.
paper, news rife with recipes for bread and circuses
nearby), touts revolutionary lamp--one not unto the
feet, as per the Good Book’s Psalms, but to the ego.
It will inflate one’s confidence, one’s self-respect
and self esteem.  Or so it says.

Upon my desk I’d place the lamp, allow the boost, the
build, the lift, then melancholy would let go and hide
with mites in carpet nap, and doubt would fold like
arms in curl, with biceps bulging veins extant.  My
countenance within the light, a face to gain the
photon’s fill, a rush of blood in puffed up
cheeks, the warmth of lamp
proclaiming me.

Contorted like a lame excuse, I’d peek atilt to view the
bulb, and energy-saving I’d espy, curled up like swirl
of Dairy Queen in flimsy cone, yet there, plain as
a hobo’s hat would be my name in script, stained
in the glass, and shade an arc encompassing
yours truly, for need would be paramount.

Yet now reality sets in, and I’ll not kid
myself no more.  Ego likes the light for sure
(that fragile rascal wrapping sandwiches with one hand),
still I’ll not limit his ability to recognize a con--for
in the mind there burns a flame, and that keeps
better light.  Pink unicorns are cute, and ego
lamps might shine, yet I dare say that they
would blind.


30 Lines
Writer’s Cramp
3-6-16