notes: i wrote this in the car in the dark in my checkbook, while on the way to jackie's apartment. it doesn't make a ton of sense, but i figured i should post it.

thumbelina

((prologue): disregard it means nothing)
camera obscura
noble rodere was what you wrote, the words to
say you took small bites out of me
you made a construction of plastic bones and theory,
you made a prosthesis,
a prosthetic thesis
i made an enemy out of cleverness. i made a spectacle
of being mute.

Deafmutes are pretty they get all the attention.
my cut-off limbs get nothing, i've got a boxful of thumbs
to say i'm crazy but i should have put some teeth in there.
no one can turn the empty pages and read the book i never wrote, no one can open the box and hear no screams.
i thought i'd left a treasure, i thought her name was thumbelina.

you could smell my acetone and tonic
where i'd cut her away and she'd sing you a song,
broken toothed mistress she knows
the honky tonk.
she can do you a dance, like you make a deaf daughter dance
like the idiot spins, your quiet broken monkey and solemnly
minstrel she'll sing my song.
i'll be told.
here i am in blackface. here i am a theif. a theif is a fox
who hides away the silver smiles, the laughter bells
in that Pandora's box,
that building, building of me. what we call grey-haired,
we call painted and picasso-smeared, it's supposed to be inside.
Grendel you're supposed to be the light at the end of the tunnel,
Skeleton Jack you were made of the skulls of the unborn, these aborted
poets but you were crying wolf, wolf,
you were crying me silent, you were crying me
a locked box with nothing inside.