brittle

i'm a marionette,
strings pulled off, stuck in place
(i dance for no one)
and i've atrophied from sitting still in silent protest,
just one hunger strike away from martyrdom
where i'll join legions of
fallen angels in purgatory,
each starved and folded into
an hourglass paradigm all
ribcage and pelvis bent out in a
prison-bar silhouette of skin stretched over bones,
a sallow 2x4 canvas
painted with self-loathing
and striped with denial

my will is
caged, held hostage
behind the jericho walls of my stomach
where i learned about loathing and restraint
(i am tied and tarnished by the silver lining
left so long in the distance that it's
turned blacked and frayed away
like the skin on my fingertips)
and i wish i had those
cigarette extremities sweating metabolic regrets
nicotine-stained like old fingerprints
down pretty bones held
waist-high on display

"i thought you were different---"
but i'm trying to look as plaster-cast
as i refuse to be,
so forgive me when my name is printed in
the same statistic font as my frame stamped
"not otherwise specified"
so you can't pinpoint
those breakfast-time concerns

i've seen shadows stumble frozen,
arms wrapped around scapulae
like armor for the cold,
chain-mail full of holes in
sparse defense against
icy stares counting backbones when you've gone
(and they'll call you
names, but not for help)
so i scratch criticisms into wet cement
with my pin-cushion wrist-bones,
hiding my vertebrate secrets so
no one sees my thoughts
(these bones don't lie)
and i've memorized my cell dimensions
by looking in the mirror

if you're careful, you might catch the
jumbled words filtered backwards through my
atom-bombed state of mind
like fireflies' eerie glow to
light the way to truths you'll wish
stayed in the dark,
broken thoughts run through
and starved in the
backwoods soaked with acid rain
from the fallout somehow
less than sustained
(air strike leaving nothing
but surface tension,
all the trees scarred for life)

heaven's been overrated, and i'm sure
i can wait as long as these
phantoms molting feathers can
if i don't go mad with all the
shoulder blades and hip bones of my
more successful predecessors
punched out under the jaundiced canvas skin
(painted scabbed corrosion)
of what they had to work with

i'm touching the dusty
shoulder joints you get from being
folded motionless by malnutrition,
trying to think of the last time i had
enough energy to pretend i was okay with
my fingers pressed to collarbones and
teeth pressed to the curb,
thinking of deflected questions leaving
flesh-wound psychological scars
in places i know like
the back of the hand that feeds