song of myself: the first installment

1
This is sort of difficult because right now I am stuck
on the verge of a highly anticipated upheaval in which
the definition of "myself" will change; so
which "myself" should I write about, the current one or the one trotting off into a year from now?

In earlier words, I have written about:
a private eye who is tired by his home and by himself;
a boy who is tired of being forced to betray, who is tired of being used;
a wanderer who is tired from the constant breaking down that empty anticipation causes;
a child who is tired from running away and away and away;
a dancer who is tired of grazing wonders that only urge more, more, more;
a saint who is tired by the world's unchanging, ambivalent face;

These people are undoubtedly "me" — which explains why they're all so tired,
I guess.

2
The private eye, he hates the city but loves living in it
because it's so dirty that it stains him down to his lungs,
and he hates his job but loves doing it
because he hates himself for selling out everyone he knows and watching men destroyed,
and only in America can a man hate his life so much but still hold so dearly to every next day.

3
The boy, he taught the world a lesson that neither he nor his brother learned,
and he's the one being praised while his brother is vilified so categorically,
but he loves his brother because he's a martyr, and they must love everything (except themselves);
and he aches from the betrayal he was forced to play out
and it doesn't even matter because the people in this country can never sacrifice enough
to remember the lesson that killed him in the first place.

4
The wanderer, he can't find peace;
since the tundra was split with towers of metal and greed,
the rain of oil has suffocated his skin;
he once saw beauty here, but with the bears and caribou all busy mourning their losses,
the landscape has melted into a void that sucks in wonder and spits money out the other side.