inspiration can bite my fat ass.

what i need you to etch in me...
i haven't got room for the carving...
the cuts...
the grooves...
the man who'd risk my beauty rather than keep his tools sharp...
the way the chisel hardly breaks the surface
and yet my tears are quickly eroding me as if i were made of limestone...
as if the man was a raging river...
as if the only unique thing about me is that i am sedimentary...
leaving myself behind in piles and heaps...
to keep someone else's land fertile...
to help someone elses flowers grow...
shaped into a cavern or figurine
i am still not the sum of my parts
i am a sculpted creation
made with someone else's best interest in mind...
when all i want...
is to be something beautiful for you...

ramble ramble.

do not be alarmed...
for what i have made...
i have made with stone and blood...

and i am not afraid to finish it...

do not be fooled by innocence of age...
for what my father's made...
he's made with blood and promises...

and he is not afraid to end it...

this beast...
this, screaming guide...
it speaks to me in tongues...
repeating what i already protect like truth...

keeping guard...
the monster puts me to sleep each night...

because he fears not blood, nor youth, nor corruption of the truth...
he sees what i'm eyeing...

my catalyst has become too much a solvent to make much more than a mess...
and i am preaching wisdom to those who already knew it best...
and it is escaping them like a song they didn't like...
like a poem read too quiet...

reminding me...
all the while...
that the truth...
is much harder than it seems....

scales.

like a snake
slithering haphazardly
trying so hard to shed it's skin
reveal the sparkling scales beneath an itchy tight sheathe
my eyes have been cloudy, too, snake
you're just trying to shed your skin out of instinct, out of habit...
i'm trying desperately to shed mine
because deep down, i wasn't supposed to be this...
you and i are both wild creatures...
both stuck in cages with glass walls for strangers to look in and see...
we'll put on a show, hood up, let them see our underbelly...
we don't do it for them...
we do it because we have to...
it's so strangling sometimes...
living with an outfit of age...
but when it comes down to it, snake...
we're both just living for the next time
that we can shed our skin