Please.
Give all your pain to me.
Please.
Give all your pain to me.
You got two left just
flush 'em down
or give 'em both to me, just
tell me that this loss I feel
I'm not feelin' for free, and
please.
Give all your pain to me.

O God,
help me to stop
borrowin' your time,
'cause where we're from
there's not much left
unless
you make it out alive,
but I see
it ain't that easy when you
visit home and find that
Please.
Give all your pain to me.

You ran up to the mountain top but
pain don't give up chase or stop
just 'cause you think you're free,
you **** it in the way
your mama taught you on her knee.
Please.
Give all your pain to me.

I know two folks
who died
the year you
cracked my wrist with
sudden strength, hot fear, you
seized up on my floor
my GOD I cried
so hard
when I found out
what the pills were for.
I made a call for you
and still today
you called to say the
same old ****.
Give all your pain to me.

No I ain't mad, how could I be?
I wish I hadn't done it too and
made it out all safe and ****,
and what makes me so different?

I sit up high in Boston,
far from home, so far removed
I didn't even know (her name here)
died real quick then
got up slow, I had to hear it
in a booth with you and
now I'm thinkin'
'bout the odds that you die too,

so young like (his name),
still a teen, still
runnin' on the football team
'til everyone in school just
cried 'cause
he weren't comin' back.

And (her name here) with
flowing hair,
she couldn't breathe.
She used to sit right
in the chair
I sat by in our class.

It doesn't matter
'cause you cleaned yourself.
But now we're here.

You promised me and
I believed
that I would never
have to see you
scream like that again, but
please.
Give all your pain to me.

collect my fears and my wounds and
my hearts and my tombs, all the
dead that i've buried
and the living things too.

wish it weren't over.

take a look through
the steeples and pews.

underbrush fire, pious desire,
pale-soft leaves that cut you
like briars.

Coming together
it is easier to work
after our bodies
meet
paper and pen
neither care nor profit
whether we write or not
but as your body moves
under my hands
charged and waiting
we cut the leash
you create me against your thighs
hilly with images
moving through our word countries
my body
writes into your flesh
the poem
you make of me.

Touching you I catch midnight
as moon fires set in my throat
I love you flesh into blossom
I made you
and take you made
into me.

I wander through the woods
on a brisk Autumn evening.
Leaves growing crisp with frost
beneath my heavy boots
and light fading faster than
heat escaping from my head.

I stop.

Only the pines boast any greenery.
The rest of the trees' leaves create
a path that I've yet to disturb
with my trudging trail.
I shove knit-covered hands into my pockets
and release a foggy breath in still air.

I wait.

A slight rustle in pine needles is my clue.
I'll stay until my cheeks redden from the chill
and the sky releases snow as pale as my bones.
I'll wait for when leaves are crushed
yet I'm still as stone.
I'll leave now that I know

I'm not alone.