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.