Wrapped

If I hold onto a poem
I'll hold onto what it's about, I'll go mad
As if I needed any help doing that

I'm not sure if I can remember being sixteen
But I can remember being prehistoric bacteria
Well dammit, those were the days,
No ideology, no manipulation!

Hands on my shoulders,
I'm broken but not bruised
"It's obviously not your posture
You're just carrying the weight of the world on them"

And I'm wrapped in a shade of blue nobody can see
Pressing me down day on day into the bed
With the weight of, the immeasurable fatigue
Of uncountable fucking, fucking, fucking FUCKING generations
Media men sing their lying lullabies and I,
I am aching and unsedatable

There's a disturbed artist who highlights my joints with her brushstroke
Like the stroke of a whip,
"Make it stop!" she's on too many meds to hear me
And the blows to my ancestors' bodies have posed me for her portrait;
We look so much better in a heap, don't we?

I see women walking around in sweaters
To fight off the eternal fevers they run,
And can't run from
I see teenage boys jumping off bridges
With their hands over their ears and I fall with them,
Drowning it all in a stream of my own swearing

And I
I didn't choose this life
But it chose me I cannot refuse
"I am champion of causes, hear me roar!"
I am abuse-survivor, hear me whisper

I load no gun
I swing no sword
But day on day
I train for war,
And someday these joints,
So sore this evening
Will carry you home
(For I know the way by heart)