Reclamation of Skin

At day's end,
the body is crusted and crepe-d with a thousand collected words
Clinging, barbed and desperate, to skin

are letters, phrases, excerpts,
insults, hopes, emails, curses,
or any mutant combination of the above

Unless, of course,
you despair of human interaction in its entirety
and currently live in a cave
(Understandably so, good sir)
Only fellow humans to could sling such words

Hobble forward beneath a shower spray
to scrape clean with pumice-d vigilance
Yank those suckers loose
with tiny, shrill cries of indignation
and crossed little arms

But what happens when the water
sluices down,
only to clog the drain?

Sure, some words head straight for the pipes,
like barely tolerable prepositions
and unremarkable conjunctions
Even a super cheeky determiner may
grip the drain,
squaring off in its many-limbed form,
a desperate ninja, wanting only to be close to you
(but a slight toe shove
will send that sucker swimming)

But adjectives? Verbs?
NOUNS?!
Those little shits stick like syrup on a pancake

Even if a body manages to
scrape clean,
reveal a naked and hopeful self,
getting the damn words down the drain and off to their watery deaths
is a whole other matter

Stand in the shower for hours,
fighting off the day's words,
coaxing them,
bribing them with shiny trinkets and smelly soaps,
promising them another day, another deal,
if they'd just freakin' DIE already!

What's a body to do?
Hard enough to keep the drains free
of skin, hair, basic biology
If words are not cleared out,
it's inches of tepid, grey
word-filled soup,
as verbs and adjectives fight nouns over skin cells
to use as a rowboats


Who wants to bathe in the turgid filth of another's words for all time?

You must fight!
Fisticuffs, I say!
This is your emancipation of skin
Save yourself!
Liberate your bathtub!
Kill the words that assume such familiarity!
Do what you must,
even if it means fighting dirty...

Massacre the bastards and send them
to Davey Jones Locker Room
A shower genocide of epic proportions
With bleach in one hand and Drain-O in the other,
they won't know what hit 'em

Send them running with tears streaming
Have them leap into the abyss of their own accord
(At least the verbs will leap with flair)
because the only other option
is to choke in a chemical tidal wave of retribution

Uninvited guests,
boot them out and reclaim your skin
True, it's not their fault they were flung upon your body,
but neither is it your  responsibility to house them

Let them find succor in the soapy depths of drainage,
while you lather up and breathe in the sweet, sweet smell of freedom