conditional love in poetry

Have you ever noticed how
if the names of many skin conditions
weren’t the names of skin conditions
they’d be exotically beautiful names
for woman performers?
Like pop stars or strippers?

Exzema, for example.
Say it with me: Exzema.
Wouldn’t that be gorgeous?
“Oh man, did you hear that new Beyonce song?”
“She let Excema take that one verse.”
“Bey is so good to up and coming performers.”
“Giving Exzema a chance to shine like that.”
Exzema.
It’s kinda beautiful.
If it wasn’t already attached to an awful
awful awful awful itchiness, you could
totally bop to the club remix
of a song by Exzema.

Or Psoriasis.
Psoriasis.
That’s like a stripper name.
Like not a high-end Vegas stripper name
but like the performing name of the best
stripper in a low-rent strip club,
like the only stripper who gets a stage name
like everyone else on the pole is just
Beth or Millie or Karen or whatever
but the name on the dingy marquee is PSORIASIS
“Ladies and gentlemen, coming to the stage
here at Peepers, the classiest strip bar on
the entirity of Northern Genesee Street
please get your dollar bills and bus tokens out
for the lovely Psoriasis!”
I mean
most of the Beths and Karens at Peepers
had literal psoriasis, of course
but she would be the lone metaphor.

Rosacea?
That’s a Spanish-language Latin Pop star.
Rosacea’s huge in Guatemala but she’s just
starting to break into the American scene.
“Oh man, did you hear Yolando Pour Tu Amor
by that new girl Rosacea? She’s gonna be
the next Selena if all goes right. That’s
that’s a real jam. Check out Rosacea.”

I think Alopecia would be like
a Zendaya kind of thing
like a former child actor
who they just always billed as
“Alopecia” on the Disney Channel
like the second female lead in the
sequel to “Wizards of Waverly Place”
“the Blood-Sacrifice Sorcerers of Waverly Place”
in the credits, Allison Peters just wouldn’t pop
so they call her “Alopecia”
and now she’s dating one of the Jonas Brothers
probably one of the lesser ones?
One of the ones you forgot about?
Like the fat one, Buford Jonas
the one they always made wear baggy clothes
and only sang back up and was never allowed to dance
any day now, TMZ is going to announce the engagement
of Buford Jonas and Alopecia
and no one will care at all

Cellulitis
well, that’s
that’s more challenging
but it could still work
like she’s a virtual youtube gaming streamer?
People will go to the Twitch channel of Cellulitis
and watch her avatar play Mineblox Arena or whatever
hoping that she’ll show up on screen in a hot tub
when the cute Japanese streaming character Cellulitis
is actually operated by a middle-aged man in Belgrade
named Sergie Vichovichovich
and he spends all their superchat donations on
really tacky velvet tracksuits and Kratom pills
but the internet is a delusion machine
and they honestly believe Cellulitis is real
and maybe some day they’ll get real lucky
and will be able to purchase
a two ounce jar of her urine
that’s the Cellulitis dream

And I mean,
I’m not telling you anything you didn’t know
we’ve all thought about this, I’m sure
everyone at some point in their lives
will realize that skin conditions
would all be exotic performer names
if they weren’t already the names
of painful skin conditions
I know
I know
you were just talking to your gramma about it last Thursday
but hear me out
I wonder if it works in the other direction too

Like
“Yeah, I wondered why my knees were starting to flake off”
“so I went to the doctor and it turns out it’s just a bad”
“case of Jojosiwa”
“yeah, three weeks of pills and no more Jojosiwa!”
“my knees are already starting to grow back”
“Jojosiwa is awful but once you know, there is a cure”.

Like
“Are you sure you’re supposed to”
“bleed from the penis whenever you stand up”
“I don’t know, I know you said you cut it”
“in that freak accident with the carrot peeler”
“but maybe that’s just a weird coincedence”
“maybe you’ve just got a case of Rihanna”
“you better get that checked out”.

Like
“if you don’t get that Shakira looked at soon”
“you’re going to die of a blood infection”
“you know that right?”
“if we only had socialized medicine in America”
“people would just go to the goddamn doctor”
“and so many less people would succumb to Shakira”

I dunno.
It just feels like that to me.
Maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe I’m not thinking clearly.
Maybe I’m distracted by my ears
being covered by stage-two Bjorks.
This is possible.
This is likely.