There Is No Purple in This Poem

There is no purple in this poem,
nor mentions of paisley,
no crying doves.

It wasn’t his
fashion sense,
his androgyny,
his apocalyptic
religious beliefs.

No, what soul’d me
on Prince
was the liner credit
on the “Controversy” album
(the first Prince I ever heard):

“Produced, Arranged, Composed and Performed
by Prince.”

A true auteur,
who could seemingly
do it all
like Charlie Chaplin,
like Stevie Wonder,
like God.

As time went on
the music got
funkier
and he became
stranger,
branched out
into formless movies,
pastel clothing,
ponderous poetry
CD-ROMs,
almost daring the fans
to stay attached
to his decidedly
unpopular
vision.

(To prove my devotion
I wore a fuchsia silk suit
when I graduated
from college,
my version of
Gangsta Glam.)

It was this belief
in himself,
in his prodigious
iconoclastic abilities,
that inspired me,
a fat
Mexican American
kid
in the Orange County
suburbs

to think
I can make myself
into whatever I want
to be,
just like Prince.

So now,
at 52
I still write my poems,
record my songs,
plan my movies,
and I still wish
I were Prince.