Shame On You
Don’t listen to the whisper.
Don’t encourage the lying Siren:
That your brain is a trash island, refuse washed and scattered upon the shore.
Your mind a broken cobweb dangling,
swaying in autumn’s desolate breath,
catching dead leaves, detritus, and various bugs.
That your heart is crumbling walls, eroded; dilapidated and weathered
like an old barn on a forgotten patch of land.
That your thoughts are dried worms stuck on a summer sidewalk,
and there’re knives somewhere behind your eyeballs.
That your tongue is a cinderblock atop a dead and rotting squirrel.
That needles line your throat and birds fall from your sky.
That you’re a flower with no petals and no pollen,
refusing to die, in a state of perpetual wilt.
That you’re a cracked mirror, a stained rug, a stolen heirloom;
an amputee dog.
This is shame’s whisper; don’t’ listen
lest you start to believe and become dead snakeskin.
Copyright © Joey Turner | Year Posted 2017
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