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POX
Sometimes it gets so quiet.
In front of the bathroom mirror, I can't tell if it's
flourescent lights
or the silence
that's making my ears ring.
Jaw covered with foam, razor scalding hot.
With the first stokes down my cheek,
hairs pop off into the blade.
Eyes locked on pores like a shoot out of a spaghetti
western.
Air slaps the clean skin, and thirteen-year-old face
hits my eyes.
I remember it all.
I remember erethramycian.
I remember Retin A, topical solution.
I remember tetracycline, and the allergic reaction it
caused.
Red hives over all the parts of my body that didn't
already have them.
I remember squeezing vitamin E jell caps on my chin.
Learning how to fall asleep on my back, so I didn't
ruin the pillowcases.
I remember mountains on Oxy cleaning pads and deep
rinses.
Alcohol smell burning my eyes. Soaps mixed with sand
and gravel.
The rainbow colors on a safety pin sterilized by a
match.
The way the sulfur hangs in the room for hours.
When you stab your self with them, they feel three
inches deep,
but you know its less then half a centimeter.
The sound when you can get one of them to pop.
Swelled tires hit with a switchblade or a screwdriver.
Too much pressure coming out of one little hole.
Pain sends an electric shock strait to your skull.
I remember the blood and the puss falling out like
Catsup and Mayo in an over sauced burger.
Fu-man-Chu relief maps from the sides of my mouth to
the bottom of my jaw.
A massive crimson mountain range with five snowed caps
a piece.
I pulled putrescent scabs out of my razor blades then.
The shaving cream and the blood gave the sink a
permanent pink glow.
I don't remember ever being called the names. I never
got "Pizza" or "Crater Face".
I didn't go to the schools in the sit coms.
Where I went, when you looked like I did, you weren't
spoken too at all.
You walked alone, talked alone, and hid.
Hid from every mirror and reflection there was. Except
for the one in your bathroom.
For that one you stared.
And pushed
and prodded
and poked
and squeezed
and prayed.
Prayed to have this mask taken off.
I wanted this carbuncle shell,
this cake of tainted dog bitten meat off.
I even asked god a few times.
But it never went away
till Acutane.
Six months of skin so dry it cracked down to the fatty
tissue
and permanent liver damage.
Pills so strong that law requires women on them to
take birth control.
If they don't they're babies will come out like
gelatinous mutants.
My upper lip pealed up on it self and looked like a
bleached mustache.
But it was gone, so far gone most people don't believe
me when I tell them about it.
So far gone that I catch myself saying, " It doesn't
matter what you look like",
that is until
I remember- .
- Geoff Trenchard