This stubborn, secretive, splintered prison

Has ripped my hands raw;

Truths bleed from my fingertips.

Limbs reduced to chalkdust,

I am crushed

By a giggling darkness, pillowing me in.

I live within a box with laughing walls.

A song, a joke, a smile

Will sting like vodka my pretty pink tongue

Attempting to slice through bear trap lips.

I hoard my sparkling thoughts in rich clusters,

Sitting on my eggs of poetry.

Nothing hatches here, and nothing flies.

I live within a dice that never rolls.

Those sparrow-boned hip swingers,

Those crow-eyed tongue cluckers

Prodded right underneath my flapping lid,

Pecked my weakened spring in two.

I am cellmate to a runaway train that never stops

But is never heard.

I live within society’s black hole.

Lightyears away, but close enough to burn,

A whisper of sunlight seduces me to jump.

Freedom is a smile away.

But I can fester here without disdain;

Cloak myself in unknown jokes

And wait patiently for someone who can fix me.

I live within myself, and that is all.