Identity Check

 

I am not Franz Kafka.

I am not Franz Kafka, I am not Spiro Agnew

I am not Spiro Agnew to be sure.

(I cannot even answer the question: Is Spiro Agnew dead?)

I am not Franz Kafka

I am not Virginia Woolf and as far as the evidence suggests

I am not Meryl Streep.

I am not Franz Kafka, I am not Ray Charles

Ray Charles, singing like the sly wicked devil himself,

"Makin' Whoopee," and who is dead.

I am not Meryl Streep.

I am not Franz Kafka, I am not King Lear, blind and mad, leaping in despair from what he thought to be a dizzying height onto the beach far below but which was actually, pathetically, from the beach to itself again

I am not King Lear, I am not Stephen Hopkins, oldest signatory to the American Declaration of Independence (as betrayed by his quivering scrawl) whose nickname was Old Grape and Guts.

I am not Theo van Gogh.

I am not Franz Kafka.

I am not Meryl Streep.

Play me a song, Ray. Sing to me.

 

August 2004