I would like to think of myself as an intellectual, but really I’m just a regurgitation of the adolescent caste system with academic anxiety and a learned fear. Well, I suppose that is a bit harsh. I used to be social *****; now I am a lowly intrapersonal custodian (let us never mind my inter-personal mess-managing, please?), though I am far from clean. __ I have found myself flitting back to this page from time to time and mentally inserting here a terse, self-degrading statement that could re-catalyze my pitiful little verse, but never actually writing it. I hold it heavy in my head where it shall remain, apparently. Apparently I don’t feel the need to read my flaws, transgressions, and fallibilities back to me. Perhaps I haven’t yet articulated them, and they’re just skulking around—hunched apparitions haunting my subconscious. (Death smells like dog treats: perplexing, but you want to touch your tongue to it so long as no one will know). I must slay them all, eventually, or else perish. But! It is not the transgression itself that I fear—my behaviors are observable, even tangible, I can stare at them for hours. It is the dark implication of the transgression—the churning matter only detectable for its outline of illumination—that gives me trepidation. How will I move-on? How will I grow-here? Like an impossible little spur that nestles between resistant skin and unknowing fabric? Can I penetrate the protection? My security is maniacal; it is evidence of crazed disillusion. I am the raven clawing through infinite veneers; I am tangled…

Out ****** spot! Out, I say!

I must regress to becoming the white blanket.
I must know nothing but God.
A simple cloth.
A towelette.
Rags!
Rags!
Rags!

…

….

…God?

…Hello?

         …Is it too late to become

…plain?