2/7/03
Where spit fizzles like soda in the wind
And the breeze fingers my eyes until
They're lathered in a shield of saltwater.
My lids, trembling with effort,
Have been forced wide open,
Exposing the pupils they've been trying to protect.
Rock a bye baby
You can make me look but you can't make me see.
If I am prostrate before the air,
Huddling, violated, in a hurricane,
It is not because I have given in.
My skin is bare, but I am shielded by me;
I can not choose but to be my own blanket.
The acid may corrode my back,
But me inside is still intact.
Rock a bye baby
You can make me bare but you can't expose me.
There is a certain power in denial.
I can choose to ignore what I can't choose to avoid,
And that way I can keep alive.
The sky has procured a sour acid air
And my unchaste eye is widened to it
And my body kneels to the slicing sky
But I am humming to myself --
Rock a bye baby
And when the cradle falls
And you are naked and destroyed to them:
Think of lovely things and lullabyes,
Pretend you never fell from grace at all.
