In order to examine 
all sides of a foul debate
I turned myself inside out

When I was done
I reversed the reversal
but little went back into place

I look the same
except for some weariness
and caution in my eye

but my heart is banging
(perhaps against
some maladjusted rib)

It hurts like a bell
close to cracking
while my gut isn’t easy at all

keeps twisting and poking 
in anticipation of danger
that may be real

or may be a product of
all my contortions to try and be
civil and respectful of despicable 

men and their crusted ideals
their crooked deity, their 
broken and tumbling glory dreams

I bothered to listen
and try to talk
and now I’m withered

and all my innards
are slipping around
trying to keep me

alive long enough
to do something
to make me forget

that I once deluded myself
into thinking that inverting myself
for them

was a courtesy
when in fact it was
a slow suicide

begun in the name of
a civil society
that has never existed