I am not
a Christian. I am not a Jew. I am not a Muslim. I am not an atheist,
a pagan, an agnostic, or a devil-worshipper. I am not the Pope. I am
not a Buddhist, a Taoist, or a monist. I am not a Darwinist. I am not
a creationist. I am not an iconoclast. I am not a career criminal. I
am not a vice-presidential candidate. I am not a bum. I am not a
citizen of the Prozac nation. I am not a whore to psychiatry. I am
not a good speller.
I am not a sell-out. I am not a greedy Wall Street stock broker,
or a bureaucrat ruling the world with all the double-talk
manipulation of a used car salesman. I am not a loner. I am not a
rebel without a cause. I am not a militiaman. I am not the Unabomber.
I am not the second shooter. I am not the anonymous assassin of
Malcolm X and I am not the one who held his beautiful bleeding head
as he lay dying. I am neither a prophet, nor a visionary. I am not an
oppressed minority. I am not an oppressor of minorities. I am not the
Man. I am not the status quo. I am not a political prisoner.
I am not a compass. I am not a map. I am not writing the Great
American Novel. I am not an original. I am not Sam I am. Yoda I am
not. I yam not what I yam and that's all I yam. I am not a jazz
musician. I am not the fifth Beatle. I am not the Godfather, the
Gradmother, or even the Annoying Upstairs Neighbor of Soul. What I am
is what I am is not a New Bohemian. I am not the next best thing. I
am not a bird in flight. I am not an icon. I am not moving on to a
higher plane of consciousness. I am not Rasputin. I am not a
hemophiliac. I am not the secret twin of Louis XIV. I am not the
still-living daughter of the last Czar. I am not a refugee of the
Cold War. I am not the last of the Mohicans. I am not a broken
man.
I am not ornamental. I am not corruptible, exploitable, or
expendable. I am not bought, sold, or porcessed. I am not stoppable.
I am not a tall cool drink of water. I am not a patchwork quilt of
all the hopes and dreams you outgrew. I am not the greatest love
story of all time. I am not the protagonist of some picaresque novel.
I am not a preacher. I am not the Gimp or the Gipper. I am not the
night clerk in a cheap hotel. I am not a beat cop. I am not a private
eye. I am not a public eye. I am not a mote to trouble the mind's
eye. I am not Fortune's fool. I am neither a poor player, nor an
idiot. I am not a Judas. I am not Lazarus, come from the dead. I am
not a Christ for you to crucify. I am not a monster of my own making.
I am not a rough beast, slouching or otherwise.
I am not a hipster. I am not a pollster. I am not a youngster. I
am not a lobster. I am not my mother's transvestite ex-husband's
ex-roommate's lizard's veterinarian who killed my own seductively
obese stepsister. I am not a talk show guest, trying to replace
personal fulfillment with cereal box celebrity. I am not a rapist, a
lootist, or a pillagist. I am not a nudist. I am not a carnival side
show. I am not that goatee guy. I am not Pretentious Art Guy. I am
not a pop star. I am not the walrus.
I am not a commercialized basketball star. I am not the
heavyweight champion of the world. I am not a has-been child star. I
am not an American. I am not a Spaniard. I am not an Ethiopian. I am
not a victim of my own abuse. I am not a survivor.
I am not an anachronism. I am not a hypnotist, or an illusionist,
or a magician or a shaman or a pickpocket, or a propagandist. I am
not a father of my country. I am not a keeper of the gates. I am not
the Keymaster. I am not an opiate of the masses. I am not a Marxist.
I am not a bolshevist. I am not a Democract. I am not a Republican. I
am not spying on Ross Perot. I am not a soccer mom. I am not a driver
of the Information Superhighway. I am not a Generation X'er. I am not
a poet. I am not finished.
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