Fleshened Bones

Thick-skinned Mamma
They call you
Wretch
Wet
With gutter water
Where mosquitoes slaughter
Bastards bred in blood

The stench of your shit
Is no different from mine
Your body holds imprints
Of careless hands
They make promises to you
They make promises to me too
As they pitch their tents precariously
And see a home in our eyes.

They use you
To strike out at others
Dealers, wheelers, brokers
They hail you
Only to acquire halos
Fake words froth in lip corners
As they make claims over your body

Harlot of the night
You spread your thighs
And let them enter you
They cover their impotence
With soggy limp notes
To buy your silence

One day you screwed up their rehearsed parts
Their whimpering caviar farts
Moonlighting in capris and tie-up heels
In your sodden streets
Waist deep, they gasped
As they wept for their departed Mercedes.

My baby, my baby, they slobbered
Paedophiles scavenging for your innocence
Even as they unzipped
And asked you to go down on your knees

I wonder who hurts you more
Strangers on rented desires
Or old settlers
Like bored spouses
Performing their duty
Their procreating sacs
Falling asleep within minutes

Lilliputs with little darts
Aim at you
You, hussy, stay quiet
You don’t tell them you like it deep
Your pleasure is not on their minds
They are flexing imaginary muscles
To face the tussle with their low self-esteem

They know about the Singapore strut
The Shanghai slut
Shaven a pre-pubescent clean
Deodorised and sanitised
Playing their rubberised organs
With sterile mouths
It’s the same thing
Still catering to hounds

They pumped you up with implants
The mounds fell on them
At the moment as you lie
Sagging, haggard
They say your streetwalker
Days are over
They plan to run you
Like a high-class bordello
Where pimps will be called
Pioneers
And madames who learned
At your feet
Will give you a kick
A polite pedicured kick
From sheer envy
As the soft music plays
The scented flames rise
To seal every orifice
With candle-wax
And starve you
To fetch the anorexia prize
Beer bellies and pierced navels
Will create fables
Penning paeans
When they haven’t ever felt your pain

Purples prose ruses
Will hide purple bruises
Those aren’t love bites
They are teeth marks
As they try to plunder you
Rapacious rapists
On power trips
Still wearing neck-ties
As they drop their pants
For a quickie
Chalking qualifier miles
To sell their lies.

Floozy, they have taken enough
You have given too much
Nursed and nurtured millions
Minions
Of practised emotions

They are trying to help you up now
Pretending to save you
The blueprint at their door
A mannequin in the window
Look, she is ours, they say
Once they are safe
They will fortify you
For the dead you have left in your trail

Don’t feel guilty
You killed no one
You died the most
As you die each day
When they drug you, poison you
Stomp all over you
Your gleaming body
Covered with slashes
Today they offer you silks
To conceal your scars
They cannot bear to watch
The wounds they have caused

If a spectator you must be
See yourself in the smoked glass
You survived
Because you were meant to be

Lay with me in my bed
Skin to skin
As I trace your forgotten curves
And touch your bones
I can tell you it hasn’t been
Much different for me

We have been there
Bare
As prying eyes
Wrote our destiny

It was always love for me
Let me hold you in my arms
Sister, mother, fellow bitch
I won’t applaud you for your spirit
That’s the old trick
To make you look like Kali
They worship not
They see the skeletons at your feet
And tongue hanging out with glee
Little do they know that it is coated
With your own bloody plea

What more can I want from you
Than what you have already given?

Now it’s my turn
Woman to woman
To make you feel
That I understand your needs

I will stroke your hair
Caress you
Hum a song
Tell you stories
Small tales of a small life
Forget the times
When our lips quivered
With the ache from arrows
Let us smile together some more
For we know
That grab us they might
They haven’t got as far as our souls

Yes, virgin whore.