Stripper

She stripped herself bare,
stripped herself clear to me:
unravelling all her twisted layers
like a strip teaser on stage,
tearing away the disturbing images while I watched in tears,
crying at her nakedness.

I cried.

I cried as she pushed down her first coat of skin,
ripping off the muscles and sinew,
the yellow fat and the stringy tendons that bound her being together,
wrenching out her hair as though it were straw or dirty wool.

I cried as she dismantled the parts,
the blubbery mismatched organs that she laid
upon the dirty floor,
a precision in her placement
like a parody of surgery.

When she stood aside at last,
I screamed as though my ears would bleed,
and the final curtain closed upon her uniform of nudity:
her madness cloaked in yellowed bones.