I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable

Tag: poet but didn’t know it

  • Walt Whitman Said It Better Than I Ever Could

    Walt Whitman Said It Better Than I Ever Could

    These are the strange in-between days,

    a fever dream I can’t escape,

    the unsettling quiet after the war.

    But is it after or is it before?

    Stuck in purgatory in this place.

    All I ever wanted was more.

  • Lizard plays dress up

    Lizard plays dress up

    I muck about in my ill-fitting skin.

    I grind my jawbone into grit. 

    I waft and I waver, and I wait and I wait. 

    My scaly shoulders suffer in the thick air. 

    It’s putrid, even rancid; every inhale burns. 

    I can’t stay here. 

    I make it halfway down the road,

    I let out a chilling scream then, and turn around.

    My sandpaper tongue probes the spaces between the dentin of my teeth.

    I lick the sediment from my gums and I wait and I seethe. 

    Oh, this alien skin. 

    I grimace, spitting out sawdust remnants. 

    The first scale has sloughed off and hangs suspended halfway down my back. 

    I am reptilian. I am panicking, and wishing for the grace that I lack. 

    A quick glance around, but I no longer care who sees. 

    I unzip this human suit, step out. 

    No, I step in. To myself. To me.