There are days when my soul feels stretched out like a ribbon emotions hang ing from a thread on the line, like laundry, for all to see, on pegs vulnerable in storms letting wind caress and sometimes whip them round in beaten time like a tempest They tend to get bruised, secretly battered internally as the surface of me smiles and marches on Vocal chords tightening as the larynx longs in primal urge to take out the words in one long graceful arc of purge On these days I need to sit in the cloudforms of my mind's eye and let myself feel what I cannot show: the daily coldness gnawing at my innards blow by icy blow In these hours I must let the tears well up and run down until the sting of salt penetrates the glacier let the significance of unspoken words rise up from the deep dermis layers into my throat, my tonsils up to the palate and tongue out through my lips to the heavens, releasing the unsung those words caught within the walls of my neck - they almost make me choke exhaust contamination from heavy, unseen smoke It billows up and out and soon, like hard-worked magic this morse code is busted because I am sick of feeling tragic I command clear communication to filter through the spasms of fog in drops of dew I command my words to be heard in tiny spikes of sun And all the while in clear spirals, a prayer commences to be spun: for the harsh and bitter be flushed out in unabated, icy rush for my soul to rise up for the cleansing in aching spirit blush for the painfulness of silence to be ground out upon the floor for the shadows of the violence to be obliterated to the core