What Lies Underneath

I think about the hatred that fills veins.

Snow white swirling

and churning,

covering everything it touches,

obliterating the differences among us.

No shade

of green or brown

or nakedness.

Nothing exposed.

Just the icy cold stares

of eyes frozen in place

too scared to see

what lies underneath.

I think about this hatred

pulsing,

day after day,

taking on a life of its own

passed down the way fine china is passed down

from one generation to another.

Eaten from the same silver spoon.

Licked clean,

then stuffed in drawers

until the next new set of hands comes to

pull it out,

polish it,

make it shine again.

A dying Balloon

What is this shit,

this filth,

this dark 

that resides in me?

That pushes me

deeper

down

into the ground,

that buries my soul,

my smile,

my velvet limbs

as if they were mere afterthoughts?

I am here,

alone 

in the dark,

alone with my blindness now

unable to see 

the street that stretches out before me,

the row of books,

the aisles of food. 

How can it be that who I was 

could be taken so easily,

with a snap,

a crack,

a second too long,

a wet mistake?

It is easy for you,

the others,

the untouched,

to sit and judge

to go back to your little lives,

your perfect little sighted lives,

while I stumble through mine now

like some freak. 

A trip to the library is too much.

A war zone of the worst kind,

shuffling through ‘p’s and ‘q's

too embarrassed to ask for help. 

It is all fun house mirrors now

playing games with my brain

while I try to hold on,

hoping to make sense of the un-senseable. 

A nonsense without laughter.

My head a warble on a stick,

bobbing along,

inconsolable.

like some dying balloon.