Shame
       

When a boy passes out drunk at a party
and children take their sharpies to his face,
it is not shame. It is humiliation.
It is the knowledge that a boy will wake,
blear-eyed, and fail to see the difference.
Unless of course you become the kid
who never woke, the one they laid to rest
with the word wasted across his forehead.
It is not shame. It is the body as blind
slate to someone else's blind confession.
Skin knows. It has a history of knowing,
of taking just so much ink into the blood
until the waters of the dream go black.
The deader the shadow, the longer it lasts.

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Copyright © 2012 Bruce Bond All rights reserved
from Crazyhorse
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission