I am,
The face you never see,
On posters and billboards,
Half starved, naked,
Beyond beautiful, to be
Served on a silver platter,
For you to touch, twist and take,
Morsel after morsel.
I am,
The laughter you never hear,
Stirring lives,
Rubbed together in plastic embrace,
Made alive in the objectionable agony
In the chimera of chemicals
Praised at pawn shops
By asthmatic Archdiocese
To fall, to drip,
Lip by lip
Throat by sore throat
Through hollow chests
And wasted waists
Of fools painting tears
Upon torn faces.
I am,
The play you never see,
On streets below your tinted windows,
Staged for the world to witness,
For free, though
None stays to admire,
Too paltry, they say, too plain,
Too painful, coarse and vain,
This drama,
That reminds us of our own lives.
I am,
The speeches you never give,
From proud pedestals, and altars,
Like a speck of spit,
Luring the sea of men,
With words; carved and honed,
Too bright for us,
Of clouded eyes,
To warm these hearths of our own.
I am,
The truth you never know,
From beyond your walls,
And the sanctum of your own asylum
Where you pray
To the earthworms armed with earthquakes
To the dead; dead from too much death
To leper’s liberty
To chronic charity
Never to arise
From the ashes
Or seen through the uncertain curtains
Of your marble eyelashes.
I am,
Everything that makes
Nothing possible.
THE HUMAN ANVIL 