Scattered

He
Writes
Words all across himself
Strews the alphabet painstakingly upon his skin
Lets the sentences fall from
His one ballpoint pen, a gift from a guard who needed to do some thought of good one day
This man
Sits, stands
Twists like a cyclone into any shape
Careful not to squander
His precious canvas
He gives each word, each syllable, a
Caressing attention as a mother gives a child
(He forgets what that is) 

He writes
Not as a man who needs to remember the milk
Nor as one who, bored, doodles upon their smooth skin
--Would he had that ink to waste--
But as himself, spilling his very soul onto his wrinkled, weary self
Pitch-black ink marching words the
Only thing to keep him chained and fettered here
In what may as well be Hell
He improbably longs for a staying, a purpose, a legacy
And he never goes out in the rain
He does not want to be washed away.