I wake up
Naked as hell
Skin as white as clouds
A few days before the storm
Throw on a robe
**** bathroom mirror
Reveals a face
That’s got flesh singing of
Deep buried families in banks of snow
Frozen suffocation on the way home from grandmas
You ask me why
Why I smother my features
Plaster over them
Makeup thick as oil
Chalked on like a shield
Why I parade myself
In these slinky dresses
That hang around me
Like enemy war flags
Wishing to challenge you
I grapple with the words
The explanations I cease to find
Leave me with
Show up
Just wait
To see me
Naked as hell

Exhaling
Grey grumbling
Storm clouds
You sit
So artistically
Arms and legs folded
You form beautiful human origami
With your elegant thinness
Paralleling paper
So enchanting I almost forget
You are not impervious to cancer
Nudging that thought to the back of my cortex
I allow myself to drift with the smoke
And tumbling out of your mouth
I drift onwards, upwards
Away
Lazily but surly
Step outside
This time when you exhale
It’s the air in your lungs
once again I cling to
Anything from you
Even something as empty as this air
So for a moment we’re frozen
Transfixed
Hanging without context
Sitting out in the cold
Things become clearer
You can see the product
Of working lungs
And unblocked trachea
Carbon monoxide
I call upon lessons and remember
This is also poisonous
And that some folks
Breathe fire to earn a living
Wonder if you could be the first
Greatly acclaimed poison breather

You came to know me
How you gave me face
Gave me name
Titled credibility
And privilege when you spoke of me
Amongst those held in esteem

Wonder now
If you might rob me
**** me of things I have come
To need
To want
To believe

Snarl words at me
Like rabid dogs
And slash down fondness
With awkward silence
Of church and business
Giving way to languages
Of far off districts
Inhabited by sailors and ******

Steal you their tongue
I know you can
Have heard you talk
Like breaking bottles
Sharp flecks of empty
Thrown out of car windows
Catching light
Exploding fireworks on the sidewalk
Screaming out into the heat

Before I was old enough
To understand such suggestions

Scratched the stall
Yelled at me in sharpie
From some non-washable preacher
Spelling out the lives of others
Or dictating to me
My own existence
Below pen wielding atheists
Wittily drew back
(or else not so)
Scathing remarks
In hen pecked hand
My thoughts overwhelmed
enveloped
By the smell of *****
A wonder
As to who decided
They needed to drop
Yet another five pounds this morning
Scarred linoleum stairs up
With odd
Unpredictable faces
Like ink blot tests
Deciding upon sanity
Sighing I dig into my pockets
Grasping my own
Trusty ink fed sward
Adding in my sentiments
‘People without lives write on stalls’
Pondering for a moment
What others will think when they read this
As much as I am
I am not a vandal
It is as much art
As this
As much the same
Sinking feeling
That goes with the fact that
I just want
To be
Heard
I just want
To be
Me