Foregone Conclusions
Body photos make you shiver.
I know.
I looked too fit to be downgraded,
and so no one ever took my injuries seriously. I wish I had enough energy to actually maligner (malinger?)
but it's okay.
No one lives forever,
and if my body decays early—
well, it'll be your fault,
but when has that ever stopped you?
You brazenly manipulate electoral boundaries,
and also the truth
every time.
It's like lines torn through my psyche,
that I'll never be able to rhyme together again.
But I think you'll find
that even little Kristang boys get grown,
and discover that their bodies are very, very fine.
So I smile, even as I hide behind
nothing.
Literally nothing,
except my shorts.
You try
to do the same, but I think you'll find that even in this year's trends and analyses and reports
you are a functioning image only in name.
For your own web of putrid, stinking lies
about what this country means
to anyone—
is a little too profane
for any sort of meaningful comparison to actually be found
between you and I.
And my eyes wept jagged stars
when you drowned my sun
and tortured it,
in June 1987.
And now my eyes run
bloodshot red
with the light of the flag,
but I am no Superman. No one disintegrates.
Everyone just turns
to dust
in your mind.
In your model of a utopian lie, taken way too far.
The image of the garden is breaking apart.
But you don't care.
You just focus on the ridiculously insignificant,
like the lack of chest hair
over my heart,
and people not returning their trays.
Keep going, my brave stalkers.
One day—
no.
That day has come already.
The seas
are already beginning to part.
Was it a foregone conclusion?
Only you know, ultimately, how
in 1965
it starts.