SLAM!

Oubliette


I can see you. You’re talking to me.
I secretly watch your mouth building its deceit.
I don’t dare look openly into your face for fear
that you will see, through my own microscope eyes,
to the bones that live behind this scar,
trembling in your fist

My own hands will not make a fist
to keep the truth your eyes steal from me.
Your gaze is a knife that fits this scar;
it pierces my armor and shield made of deceit.
Lighting the path through the barbed wire fields, my eyes
reveal my weakness and my fear.

An oyster with its pearl, I’ve perfected this fear.
You’re not the first man who caresses while shaking his fist
in my face. I’ve hidden from many eyes
before yours, practically every glance that’s touched me
has promised only deceit,
and cut me through the same old scar.

Perhaps my strength is in this scar,
and you have only poison dipped words to hide your fear.
Your little boy soul, stripped naked behind a curtain of deceit,
trembles in fear while shaking his fist.
You don’t even know how to hurt me;
swinging wildly in the darkness behind useless eyes.

There you stand beneath my microscope eyes.
A child in a bubble, skin like a newborn; no trace of a scar.
Your masculine frailty no secret between you and me.
The weapon you use is the weapon I choose, and your fear
stinks up the room, and against what I know there is no fist
to protect you. The truth is a sling blade that cuts down your deceit

I stepped out of my own deceit,
and looked at the child weeping in your eyes,
trembling in my fist,
and saw the brand new scar
in the place where his strength melted into fear,
and without looking in my eyes, you came to me.


Deceit and pain have left behind a weeping scar;
a sliver of glass in my eye that cuts the flesh, but banishes the fear.
For it is impossible to fear the fist when you already suffer as exquisitely as me.