Self Portrait As Exit Wounds.

Who called your name and put your body 

In this wrath of a game?

The day the world justified calling a spade 

A spade, did they also agree that your body

Was not worth the beauty?

I know a lot about wounds and scars;

I know how scars are  the only certificates 

You get for surviving this war between 

Yourself and all the dark spots this 

Cleanser couldn’t rid off your skin,

I let what I know call me ignorant, then,

I carry the wailing of ghosts in my chest

I run these  hallucinations into  my skin

Till they’re real, till I can hold their 

hands and spell their bodies into stardust.

I cleanse my body of our sins and watch the nights

Put a “Rip” tag on  all the people the universe has

Ripped out of our chests and 

Isn’t this the essence of Beauty,

To never last forever?

To be a body of pollination today 

And collect your withering inside your 

mouth like a butterfly bereft of essence.

Like a corpse, swelling to the rhythm

Of sadness—To be the threshold towards 

light today And watch tomorrow’s darkness 

spot your skin.

You call the ghosts and you’re your graveyard,

You carry the scars and you’re wound;

 fresh; cut clean: You’re tenderness: 

 A paper-prayer folded into your sick 

Mother’s front teeth; her aching forehead; 

the long dance of  slavery between her feet 

and the ground: the sad rowing 

Of all the  beautiful  boats you’ve grown

 to know, into oblivion: Love; all the time: love.

I let go of the ghosts; the people in my head;

my father,Like  a river voyaging garlands,

 I let them flow,

Unstoppable in their pursuit for 

beauty and tenderness.