Can you hear me?

Can you hear me? (13th May 2008, 11.22am)

Can you hear me through your raised fists,
Double-glazed eyes and emotion-fuelled lips?
Can you hear me as you rain down on me?
Am I screaming silently and you cannot lip-read?

You can’t see me inside
I go blind with the blue in my eyes
With the purple hues and the wounded pride
You can’t see me hide
Behind the split wounds and the raised mounds
And the broken bones
And the lies I tell the world outside

Can you hear me through bloodshot words,
Poisonous untruths you imagine you’ve heard?
Can you hear me as you lay aside my humanity
In your drug-fed tour of disgust and hate of me?

You can’t touch the world
I create beneath my skin to live within
Only my heart and soul to fill the holed-up
Loneliness as I uncurl
And fill myself, flow back into the edges
I vacate when you reach
Your torturous heights and overwhelm

Can you hear me through your rhino-skin,
Toughened hide that hides the man within?
Can you hear me reaching right back out
To those years when the blows were words of love?