What's In Your Bag?

What’s in your bag?

I have pencils in my bag—and pens

For school work, just like any average school girl

And for those urgent times when I need to vandalize 

the blank canvas of your ragged eyes

those the urgent times when I need to hypnotize the oxygen 

with the psychedelic stains of a renegade Sharpie.

I have makeup in my bag

To make myself pretty, just like any average school girl

and for the cold-blooded, confused moments when I need to conceal

what I used to be. 

When I need to paint my past all pretty 

as if putting lipstick on a timebomb

would make the ticking stop.

I have money in my bag

For lunch, of course, just like any average school girl

And for coffee, and clothes, and bagels, and gasoline,

And a down-syndrome goldfish named Syd Barrett

, and the most deceitful form of happiness

I’ve ever not felt—
living and breathing Forgetfulness.

And a Wish You Were Here card—just for you.

I have a water bottle in my bag

It’s for when I get thirsty, you silly goose

And for those instances when I forget how to speak

But I remember how to think

So I need something to wash down all the words

I just can’t say

Wash them away into the acidic pits of my stomach

Where they can’t bother me.  

I have a notebook in my bag

For taking notes, in school, just like any average school girl

math, history, etc. etc.—

And for secret letters to kidnap victims

and cryptic notes to cross-dressing heroin junkies

For tragic, angst-ridden poetry on days when I’m feeling blue

For peace-crane folding

 And all those paper airplanes stricken with a chronic case of wanderlust

For random scraps of paper

Where I can stick my old gum.

What’s in your bag?

 

Well, you are. Obviously.

I thought you would have noticed by now.

Maybe if I dedicate more time to vandalize

the blank canvas of your ragged eyes

 You will.

And now tell me,

Have you received the secret letters I’ve sent?