Invisible Bodies
Screaming within darkness,
time and people
pass regardless.
An invisible body,
so thin that it could ‘hide
behind a straw’.
Still, the all seeing
eyes of a hundred thousand cameras
will catch my spirit passing by, below.
And as I age,
I seem to break rather than bend
beneath the pressure of their constant glare.
It burns into my tired face,
my pale skin,
my thinning hair,
a body always walking,
but never actually
arriving anywhere.
Always talking,
never being heard –
they’re still so unaware.
Maybe I’ll be heard
when I’m just a fragment,
discovered in a pit
a thousand years from now.
Maybe that’s what it takes,
a broken body, merely skeletal
with a major crack between
my shattered forehead and my brow.
‘Hide behind a straw’ on line 5 & 6 is a reference to ‘Hang Me, Oh Hang Me’ by Dave Van Ronk (track 5 on Dave Van Ronk, Folksinger (Prestige, 1962)).
