TAP ACOUSTIC

BY Kenzo Tobechukwu

Oh, hail the bodies who succeed to look
 at their flesh in the mirror without pity.
 You have mastered the art of acceptance
 and of denial. I have only mastered one.
 It brings dense nothingness to my shoulders.
 Though, I will admit, this might be the greatest love affair.

 I remember the first time 
 someone said I am too much like a girl.
 I sat, lathered it all like grass.
 I felt it prickle my skin
 like biology.

 I swallowed hate for the first time.
 Something bitter and selfless,
 I did not question.
 I planted, with my hands,
 the first animal of destruct.

 I remember the second time
 as though it were the afterlife.
 I let it sit.
 I am no messiah,
 my wrists, like webs with sirens.

 The third time, I was ten,
 a feline with six nines.
 At this time, the moon dimmed
 inside my spheres.
 I lost all adolescence,
 if only the door out was near.

 The fourth time,
 it was not the words. 
 It was the way he spat in my face
 which created the skyline
 of the city where I would often travel
 to feel the central body orbit
 this outer natural.

The many other times,
 forced regression of ego.
 A rich resentment
 which developed the habit of discerning;
 this corporeality appetite.

 I remember the first time
 these limbs failed to make gravity.
 They floated there, still, emotionless.
 I was drowning inside,
 alive in a rotting flesh.

More of Kenzo’s work is available for download in our Full of Holes poetry anthology.