(Sinnerman Says)

Sinnerman tells me I'm a Pain Grower
— says I offer liquid breasts of false sympathy
to the Lonely One with the pale, pale face
and radio stained feet whose musty mouth
smells like it wants to be my martyr.

I say I'm an etcher of lies between
the taste buds of my indecisive tongue,
who scents her neck with flexible perceptions
and for that Sinnerman calls me Wolf Girl
— thinks I would walk into the rapids
of any river I was given, just to bathe
in the primal currents of my willpower;

or that I spend days hooking my teeth
into tree trunks — to tally imprints,
expand the latitude of my bite and
learn the art of unhinging my jaw.

I confess my bark-stained lips as
Sinnerman names me Plague Daughter:
she who wears the bristling armor of
sacrificial cricket skin — a black sheep
exoskeleton of false idol evidence.

I never aspired to be a god, but
Sinnerman said I was born an Apocalypse Woman,
that it was always in my nature to be
a harlot catalyst for degeneration.

I know my feathered organs can preen
water from lungs and Sinnerman knows
I'm an Eden Beast — original sin
fleshed out with mathematical limbs
that move easy in deception
as they birth breathable babies with
sun-blue skin and

Sinnerman wails that I'm a Modern Machine
— a twenty-first century cautionary whale
with a warning siren howling out my mouth
as I swing my bones to the whoop-eyed.

(Last Edited: 5.8.08)