The Unseen.

My paintbrushes are all nubs now-rubbed away like tinder-twigs dipped in invisible ink

for messages in bottles and secret codes screaming what's too improper to say

for blind gluttons and plates too full-greased smut stacked too high to see me trying to catch your eye

and I don't believe in God but still I'd pray

spending sleepless nights observing, responding with paper planes and hoping one'd make it through the

rings of hellfire and electrical sparks and with the ashes I retry-

with water-mixing, painting tasteless phrases on my skin to see if there's a reaction-

just give me something to work with here so I know you see me

and you do, to don me annoying and dismissed with a wave of the hand,

so another night I try again

all out of brushes-need something more permanent-digging through drawers of old paints and glazes

and wrinkled-up phases until fingers find capsules of paper-blades to relieve the pain

cutting-blades and fine-tipped corners for phrasing what you've done to me

-all of you-

I write into my skin so you blind ones can read it and you'll condemn me crazy, I know

but I don't think I could live if I didn't, no

a picture's worth a million words and a body's a temple so

I've made a landscape you can't miss and you're sure to know by ear

a leftover of war discarded by you, yeah you, my monument to my suffering and your

measured ignorance I now suspect as deliberate rudeness-

the scabs are peeling and you're afraid to touch what you've done

scared by your irony, I think, but I got you to see-

I got you to read me.