Raffle Tickets

If I grow my hair

And put all my self confidence

Back in the big blinding box

Where I first found it,

Let it bloom like a radio station

And explode pictures of its face

Across the sky in hot balloons

Then could I watch my way back

To the poems I used to write;

Etch my way into the whispered secrets

I used to hide in the knotted back

Of the perfect clouds?

Could I tattoo my neck

With the proper ratio of barcodes

To win a lottery with only one entry?

Could I feel the patterns in the brail

If they claimed to be a treasure map

Between the shouting voices of raw onions

And the pitter patter of the lovely litter: rain?

Or am I scratching at my own junk food cartilage,

Overflowing like a tip not a river

And irrigating my eyes with the sharp venom

That they splay on the innermost skin

Of depressed chalices and broken teapots?