-1flesh

skin covers bone.

it’s a way of keeping
the mind protected, like
a child in charge of safe
keeping a piggy bank. it’s
full of money

and it rattles
like empty thoughts.

my mind is a train,
going nowhere and on its
way back from some place.
even i don’t know where
that is, and no one will tell me.

something shatters in the
flat next to me. screaming,
a woman pleading. fist hits
skin, a mind is broken.

lady weeping, slurred laughter.
my hand curls into a fist,
lip imitates the growling of a dog.
more beating and weeping.

i can almost hear her mind rattling
like a young boy’s piggy bank. and
my heart goes out to her, thawed
slightly by her abuse, as i sit by my
window, cigar smoke curling around
my vision.

a splintering sound.

i think, regretfully, that her mind just
shattered
like a vase.
what a waste, what a waste.
she could have been the next einstein.

(you call that safekeeping?
a child could do a better job.)

-

author's notes, thank you, mr. charles bukowski.