The second cut ...

               There are only so many body parts to puncture.

It used to be fresh, but now's an old trick –

     I know what the rending will feel like …

like a tug, like nothing, that pours blood

     and ages into throbbing (like all aging does)

          Then turns into stiffness (like any trauma),

               And from angst into tedium

(like every stale drama).

It used to be fresh, but now it's anything but:

     It feels more like a memory.

          An old familiar memory –

A sanctual infirmary,

     A septically self-loathing mammary,

          Drying, cracking, and clamoring

               Like a long-aired childhood fantasy

                    That begins to perceive its inanity;

                              To flush out its blush of insanity

All for      chary dreams      lauding dark canopies

(Because      these –          and THESE –      hold majority

     Over good-hearted, breakless revelry

          And the cunning, frameless cookery

               Of young and vibrant anarchy –

                    GODDAMIT I LOVE this wound;      it's me

                                             As much as any analogy:

                                        I ooze and bleed so incessantly;

                                   I crave the wind's medicality,

                              The hot-and-cold's evocatry

                         Of blood in a cleansing circuitry

                    Reaching edges gone ticklish from nursery –

          Overwhelming those rinds into rhapsody:

this THIS is myself as I long to be

     And have been, at center, since infancy –

          Like a dog in-kennel, a silkwormed tree –

               So alive under-shell that on breaking free

          I would writhe at the sting [coursing tenderly],

     Vaulting over old scores, past validity,

Breaking scar – little bonds of conformity –

     And expounding on skin's magic tacitly:

          Where it hides, it grows young, and so ageless we

               Become organs of touch in a timeless sea …

What's a scar but a ledger note, cursively

     Culling dark ink from veins-gelled-with-time to free

          Out that pressure of dull internality?

                    THIS is life.      This is truth.      Overflowingly).

                                        I appreciate you, shell. I do.

               But more so the touch growing under you.