Behind Blue Eyes (revised)

 

My eyes aren’t actually blue

They change with the color shirt I wear

or my moods, a kind of camouflage

that keeps me from revealing too much

about myself, even when my thoughts are dark.

These days, it’s not dark thoughts I think,

floating in a haze I don’t always understand,

I can’t get the Who song out of my head

can’t get my eyes to change from any other color

but blue, as if I’ve turned into a bad man in a bad land

my footsteps slapping out the beat as I walk

down streets I’ve walked before, sometimes in my dreams.

people looking at me as if I am the kind of man

they have to keep their daughters away from,

my eyes blinking blindly in the bright sun

vampire-like, as if have no business being out and about

in broad day light, a blood-sucking mad man rapist

prowling these streets hunting for flesh

when all I’m trying to find in these glaring maze

is myself, cursing the fact that I can’t make my eyes

any other color but blue