"you're a little bit of a chameleon
you never quite dress the same
you always look a little bit different"

that's because I shift my skin every hour or so
I live on the constant brink of what I could be
French music at 5 a.m.
and tom waits at midnight
Rodriguez in the shower
and silence in the dead
quiet of an October snow fall

I gave up smoking and took up
chocolate pancakes at 2 p.m.
I live naked in my room made of
red fire and velvet

someday if I squeeze into
that domestic skin with a floral dress
and bulging *******
with instant coffee breath
you have to promise to build me a sun roof
the kind that I can watch the mountains turn purple as
the morning shreds itself onto the hills
and

if I squeeze into the skin
that I have already known
one with pressurized headaches
and a complex for falling for
strange men on the roadside
and an obsession for the occult
and cinnamon flavored, spine tingling
gum
a hint of violence
promise that you'll leave right away

if I want to push myself in that shrunken skin
of a small brown
tornado
tell me you won't try to run after as the
debris collects

every day I decide which skin to wrap around my spine
trying in the meantime
to scrub anonymous fingerprints off the majority of them