"all relaxed with nails bit to the quick
while golden was the silence,
like a foam filling the mouth of the exempt.

the burdened saw the damage,
absorbed with our legs lost to heated-white lies.
we remain to pull its frame from the ashen wreck of anxiety,
blown to conspicuous borrowed attacks.
we've got the nerve to live so low like this,
with nails bit to the quick and teething blood so warm.
the man who keeps sewing needles between his teeth
prefabricates every spoken word,
with no weapons to lay in front of me.
robbed of my skills of social weaponry, robbed.
impending was the omen, no choice but to sever dead skin.
you reap what you sow to degrees you'll never know."