Portending Concrete Reality

[Leah S.]

Indefatigably I fret.
Inexorably I agonize.

I crawl and curl up,
worrying that one day my skin will grow too large for my bones and organs,
and that I will lie there.
Someone will mistake my epidermal catastrophe for a used bandage:
padding the scrapes they earned after discarding tricycles
with gauze covered in my adolescent acne.
For this I bleed my wrists of anxiety.


Desperately, I attempt to flee chronological progress,
trying to climb back into the womb.
I climb up the blue cord like a rope ladder,
and in exhaustion slip down into my periwinkle noose.

I create these tribulations,
and let them tread over my unwrinkled knuckles.

I wax my skull and use the hair to weave a crown covering my now bare scalp.
I am Macbeth’s portent, becoming grievous royalty, playing my own fool.

Sorry, I get no concrete portentions. (Pretentions maybe.)
I dared not attempt a line by line, but......

Newborn fretting without getting tired,
agonizing (it's parents?) relentlessly.
crawling and curling (deformed spine?)
worrying about too-large-skin problem
Somebody is throwing tricycles and picking up used acne encrusted bandages to pad injuries incurred in the throwing of the aforementioned tricycles.
Somehow this causes the annoying but anxious infant to cut its own wrists.

Infant fears growing old, suddenly achieves climbing ability,
grabs umbilical cord, attempts to climb it, gets tired, slips and strangles self while admiring color of noose.
Dying infant manufactures more troubles which come alive and step on his knuckles.

Infant miraculously revives, finds wax somewhere, (delivery room in hospital, maybe?) rubs it on head.
Wax causes hair to fall out. (an effect which remains unexplained)
Infant collects hair and braids it into headband.
Puts headband on and pretends to be Macbeth.
Infant feels grievously stupid.

I'm not sure if you intended to put this poem in Serious Workshopping, but if you did, I think you need to start over.
Carry on. Leah