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EVE - A Naked I   >> Artwork
Kathy Norman
Trinidad & Tobago - International Business

Don’t look into these eyes,
For then you may discover secrets,
Memories cocooned by sadness,
Mental scars,
Imploded by distant actuality,
Scars for which no bandage can bear function,
So reveal the bruise of my disdainful reality,
That begets the identity of discontented me.

Don’t look into these eyes.
Ebbed in centuries of distant tides,
In a sea of wailing words
I have lost my allegiance to my master’s promise
Through my obvious decadence.
Lips crocheted into knots,
Interweaved.
The deformation of a blasphemous choice,
That toils the acrid taste of disloyalty.

So in ceremonies,
Sing hymns of reparation,
Begging to forget
Your naked consciousness,
Your consciousness,
Of self.
So,
Who am I?
Or better yet,
Who are we?
But the purge of the scourge

Don’t look into these eyes.
Men watch in servile anticipation
For my fall from Grace again,
It’s contagious,
Hypnotic,
Like the euphony of your mother’s bedtime chant.
There is no escape for me,
And consequently my child,
None for you.
Drowned in myriad whispers,
I weep,
Grasping urgently for something,
Anything that can bleach out,
This stain.

Don’t look into these eyes.
Decimated by time,
It is omniscience,
It is pre-ordained.
I am naked.