Even the blind can hear

The words rippling off your tongues

Are erupting volcanic ashes

The only warning is to pick up my feet and run

But I’m tired of running; I’m tired of the blast

Infecting a wound already stricken with staph

Please, stop laughing and pointing fingers

The lion is too eager

The leaping antelope too meager

I do not crawl out of my lone bed

Apply my best makeup and wear my best smile

To hear such blasphemes in which I dread

One crowd’s bile stretches for miles

Crawling deep inside my skin like meth bugs

I pick and I pick, picking at absolutely nothing

I pick and I pick some more, I feen

I and the world does not know what it needs

I pick and I pick until I begin to bleed

I pick and I pick hoping that this is just a dream

I am perfectly flawed down to every skin cell

I am the turtle too ashamed to ever arise out of its shell

The words seep, thrashing deeper and deeper

Echoes from wall to wall, ear to ear

“We don’t even know her!”

Look at your own self in that distorted mirror

Then fire arrows of truth at me

Not of rumors from those who seek precious glories

As the lion eats hearty, throw it bones that tell a different story!

Author's Note

Sticks & stones...