The skin ripples over my body like moon-wooed water, <br />rearing to escape me. Where could it find another <br />animal as naked as the one it hates to cover? <br />Once it told me what was happening outside, <br />who was attacking, who caressing, and what the air <br />was doing to feed or freeze me. Now I wake up <br />dark at night, in a textureless ocean of ignorance, <br />or fruit bites back and water bruises like a stone. <br />It’s jealousy, because I look for other tools to know <br />with, and other armor, better girded to my wish. <br />So let it lie, turn off the clues or try to leave: <br />sewn on me seamless like those painful shirts <br />the body-hating saints wore, the sheath of hell <br />is pierced to my darkness nonetheless: what traitors <br />labor in my face, what hints they smuggle through <br />its arching guard! But even in the night it jails, <br />with nothing but its lies and silences to feed upon, <br />the jail itself can make a scenery, sing prison songs, <br />and set off fireworks to praise a homemade day.<br /><br />Alan Dugan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/prison-song/
