WORDS FOR A WHORE I ONCE KNEW

Words for a whore I once knew
who never found her voice

I am a women in the prime of a life
for whom the bells have long ago been told.
Sound absurd to you?

You there!!! You!!!
Sitting atop your ivory tower looking down,
down on one who's taken flight
to and from the peaks of, oh,,,,
so many deceits and disappointments.

You see before you,
one who's marred and maimed,
and scarred and tamed.
You think that I have become
a most pitiful of creatures indeed.
Hey you!!! You!!!, so secure.

You who read my lament
within the soft and feathered confines
of your pleasured and pampered life.
You, who've been spared
years of lonely tears
sizzling in empty pits.

You there, who've never known the anguish
of cries which linger
forever trapped inside themselves.

No,,, you can never know the gut-wrenching poison
from your own striated reflection
which screams out from beneath the raw,
exposed layers that comprise our most primordial agonies which you've lovingly labeled,,,
our "soul".