No Personal Items

You can't keep anything.

It's posted in the stripping room

on a tattered piece of paper.

No personal items in 72 point

font Times New Roman.

The rules tell you to mail personal

items home as if that place

still exists. Does it? Only in

dreams and I'm not sure

mail is delivered there.

Prison guards are happy to

tear your personal items

right out of your hands. My last

photos Virginia, Allen, Nathan, Joel.

There is no rule allowing you to

possess parents or children

even if long dead.

Perhaps they are waiting for me at

home and wondering why the mail

never comes.

So I throw personal items away.

Letters, postcards, poems, life.

It should be easy like that

poem about losing keys and

disasters.

I'd rather lose personal

items than suffer the taking.

It makes the bite and tearing

of my personal life easier.

Even my name is faded.