The weight of a veil meant for vain shoulders
pass onto me, through me
threw me like a bolt of crushed-quiet lightning in a board room,
scheming and festering, full of faces
with smiles too big and skin too tight.
This tribe is my brand to bear, now
straining my voice and stealing my air,
thin as their disconcerted expressions
painted on their sallow plastic sheet heads.

They look how I feel: blue and lifeless
listless and shuffling
standing morgues, ranked and filed
as each others' morticians
filling in one anothers' positions,
stifling and trifling in the itchy white collar affairs
of tax dollar deaths.

This is what it feels like to swish
desolation between your gums
never able to spit that bitterness (for betterness)
from your mouth.
it permeates, inside to out to in
like poison made for sleep
gluing eyes shut so you don't have to watch yourself
don't have to bear witness while you weep.
and your ears
ringing and ringing, and ringing;
dial tones designed biaural to keep you addicted
waiting on the line
for all the gods that never gave you a straight answer.
You just get passed along to another department.

Love always came to me knotted as a telephone cord.
Why should this be any different?