Can I
itch or scratch me away
to reveal anything
a youth
some truths
someone else
Can I
have this essence
experience and my mind
but let go all else
reduced to naked skin
made for him and his sin
Can I
hold old ideals up
on alter, unaltered
religiously revered completely
Black and dull beyond measure
just circumstantial
by birth
and disgusted
Can I
resolve that ache
and wake, new
not prisoner of body
Self-made misery
subject to looks
and wordless stares
I
stripped of me
what am I
Can I
a slightly parting mouth
closed eyes
Shut away inside
until life redirects
and time reverses
I
No longer I
Can I
have nothing else
Recollect
No recollections
I should mention
there's no family
or ugly girl
No more to see
Pecola
I
Just I
Blue eyes
like I always knew
Can I

eyes out the window
a hulking metal archangel
thunders across the
mocking blue sky
just a glimmer of white
the purity of image
distance
silence
betrays the emptiness
the malaise of its contents
as it is consumed by
the passive clutches
of stratocumulus vapor

glued to the floor
my back sticky with
contempt and
introspection i
sleep and stare and
fantasize of escape
an undoing of the
essential that has
plagued this plane

Pecola's dreams are
mine but it is not my
eyes that are stubborn
it is my brain my
mind my
infinity
that cannot
that refuses to evaporate