do i dare wash up tonight

Do I dare wash up tonight?
My bare buns quivering in the stark, arctic closet
The chills should penetrate my skin no more than
my reek must permeate my denim greaves

That reek which waits to saturate at night
as I sleep tonight in covers,
the stank sweat foreruns -
for a stank next day

But tomorrow is a new day
and tomorrow is another day
A clean slate of sorts yet influenced
by ghastly nightly dreams delusions
the diary a grimoire of cobwebs and
confabulated memories catching
old loves before they lost

i shake still oily auburn locks at the
grid of stars below
on the pillow, on the cove of the 101

they interrogate me, they ask, "Why am
I slain?" "Why did you never return?"
And I cannot answer. This hour does not
call for sparse speech, it calls for flux

To wake then sleep then dream disrupts
Why have'st emotions evoke such foul
sometimes once but usually kindred spirits?
Saying prayers by the bed --
they come in doubles more haunting me
stopping by then wondering why

astral chains not cords, still torn asunder
something amiss in an urn of ash
something missing and wondering why

i shake still oily auburn locks at the
grid of stars below
on the alter, on the cove of the 101

do i dare wash up tonight?
i still miss someone.
tonight is colder,
tomorrow morning
still not sure
confessions to a wise showerhead
render me exposed!

Slightly haunted yet while
prayer conjures no bane
halfway immersed in
deaf dumb and blind
isolation chamber
the steam intoxicates but
skin clammy and cold and wet
so tensely rigid this
place is but unaware