Thursday, April 03, 2008

• didn't think i'd write one but i did. emo poem. (don't worry; it's not about you)

   

  Thank you for helping me realize what worthless trash I am [poem]
  by Dan Pham

   
  Though she paints like Benzaiten*
  Lurita's phony friends, behind her back
  Say she is a terrible tattoo artist;
    That she's slammed the door in the face of her miniscule costumers
    that her weak tiny hands shake at the table
    that she's always looking down at her scraped-up chuck taylors
    that she's never even had a fuck before
   

  But in a fetish for pain, maybe hope
  There were always those who held Lurita's hand
    to see how long they could survive under her needle,
    to be the first to have beauty inked into their backs,
  But as predicted every time,
  At the session's end,
  Those men received mutilated,
    skinny bodies in exchange.

   
  And always
  To the lacerations put to the men's carved-up shoulder blades,
  Lurita's phony friends simply replied, "I told you so;
    "you should have spent your money
    "at another parlor entirely
    "not wasted time on mangled style which loves like rust.
    "now what have you to show for it?
    "coarse and leprous scabs bending
    "under the sides of your abdomen.
  The fools' skin stings under cold sheets
  The cracking tissue bleeding into the morning
    as their dreams of being a hero turn them over in bed...

   
  But while Lurita may be inexperienced,
  To be fair, those present hunchbacks are no heroes
  Oh god no.

   
  While Lurita's phony friends
  Snicker at how young men's soft tender backs have turned into
  Calloused reptilian skin that tenses their spines,
  Under one tattoo artist's artistry
  Each man feels the same,
  And if they were given the chance to face Lurita again
  This is what they'd say:

    under your needle, Lurita
    i had hoped that your inspiration could have
    made me beautiful too,
    but it was my own twisted flesh
    that led you to cut me down;
    I was not the blank canvas you had hoped for
    growing up wincing
    with frail bones
    dense as winter sparrows
   
    what you made of me was there before
    and i did not assimilate
    with the tapestry you stenciled against my skeleton;
    instead, what matched--
    what matched what you had inked into my skin--
    was the unstoppable marring of my body
    throughout the arc of my bowed-over back,
    necrotic tissue eating muscle,
    a moist black jelly

   
    nearly human
    you are beautiful, Lurita
    turning men into monsters

   

   

  *the Japanese goddess of music and fine arts

  
  
  
  
   

   

   

   

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