Literatorture: Upon Leaving a Station at the Metro

a beautiful woman strokes my chest, and says she
likes the ‘pretty colors of my boootyful scarf’.

‘thank god’, I say. ‘I stole it from such an ugly friend’.
and it isn’t true…what they say of literature:

that it saves the sick from dying with unlived bodies
still inside them. outside the platform, we see the same

tedious arguments—lone and marbled clouds tumble over
one another, casting  shadows over so many

down-turned faces; a crowd of windless trees grows damp
from lack of attention, hints of future fungus settled on their

blackened boughs. and it isn’t true…what they say of literature:
that it was invented for the sick to have a language to themselves.

a beautiful woman strokes my chest, and says she
likes ‘the pretty colors of my boootyful scarf’.