Prick...

{After a modern adage: "If you met one asshole today, 

they were probably an asshole; 

if you met a hundred assholes today, you're the asshole."}

Whichever splinter

next crawls under –

in between my skin

and liquid tender –

from something large

and woody, aging;

something prick-thin,

roughly scraping …

Whichever splinter –

throbbing dirges,

raking my depths as

its tip emerges –

picked and pinched

at, slight and driven;

tissue-clouded,

red-wash hidden …

Whichever splinter,

bereft of nation,

slips through fascia …

if more quiet,

might have

stayed

in.