My hands on hard wood
on soft skin,
on your eyelids
as at three in the morning I put you to bed.
You are drunk and I am on acid.
The whole room is wheeling and the wallpaper peels itself,
I am sad and scared,
and the picture of you lying comfortably
Your hand in my hand
You head full of warm wine
Makes me feel small and alone
I am always caught rebuilding what you knock down
But you have a matches in your hands
and I am the carpinter

Before you fell asleep you looked at me and asked,
"Did you see how he kissed me?"
I wanted to ask you back,
"Did he walk you home, did he peel the clothes from your body?
Did he pull your blankets to your chin
and put a needle on the record?
Did he walk back to his friends alone, with car alarms screeming banshees and concrete littered with dirt and teethandorangepeels and my skin and facehaspores that arerough and large like orangepeels and did he put you in bed?
Where is my hand to hold?
Where is my carpinter

I hope one day I allow myself to fall apart
and I hope someone cares to nail me back together.
Sand down my splinters
and run their fingertips along my forearms
If I tipped over on the street, I don't believe I would wake up at home.
If I eyes grew like saucers and my head filled with echos
I still would walk home alone.

you can let your body be fragmented into one hundred bleeding pieces
and sewn back together.  
you can see the future,
the past
and humanity’s frenzied crusade through them.
you can grasp the infinite complexities in the world.
simplify them
you can make constellations from the stars.

Reading transcends time and space.
Langston Hughes wrote his poetry to the tempo of his own heartbeat;
the stars flicker,
the trees **** in water,
pulsing to the same collective heartbeat.  
The oral stories of ancient African and Native American tribes have been lost to time,
evaporated into thin air with the water vapor in
their ancient breath.  
If you are quiet,
you can hear
their impassioned voices whispering their stories in your sleep,
despite the fact
that their bodies have been crushed by colonization, corpses consumed by the earth,
miles and miles preventing their interaction.  
These stories exist in a place where
miles crunch into inches,
where whispers are louder than screams,
where even oil and water are in love.

My sister is reading Dracula
and I see her
batting her face against the pages
like a bird into a glass window
The writing is dense,
and it takes all her patience to pull wisdom from it  
She says that she read it so violently
that she expected it to howl in pain,
that she drove her sharp thumbs through its breast
and licked its inky blood from her fingers
You can watch her now,
with her nose in the book,
slurping in its words,
surrendering herself 2 it
Reading is nourishment
It is the third unacknowledged human necessity:
food, water and literature.

I tell my sister that reading makes you psychic  
I tell her that reading gives you the same clairvoyance that French Quarter fortune tellers get from reading tarot cards  
She asks me how
She is a skeptic and she demands to see the author
I tell her publishing dates are lies and that the past and the future consort like elusive lovers, and literature is their unfortunate paparazzi
That is the truth;
the past only the past in calendars and we are obliged to imitate it
again
and again
Books simplify by complicating,
convoluting their intent into distilled metaphors,
paradoxes
so you’re forced to read with your intuition
you’re forced to feel
Reading dissolves your physical body
it exposes the simple intricacy of humanity’s interactions:
conflicts
relationships
loves
hates
triumphs
failure
reading lets us hear the single pulse that ties humanity
past and present, far and near
into one body
Reading bestows upon us a profound sense of insight into ourselves and the world we inhabit

I learned to deal with you
Like I learned to deal with the ocean
Be still
Be relaxed
Be unmoving
Till the wave passes over me
But for that moment,
You are a Kanagawa force
And I am caught in your turmoil, underwater
You shout
Press
what else can I do for you?
It’s for you!!!
Slack body is tossed like ***** clothes in the wash
Pounding me deeper into spiraling dark water
Draws at my shivering limbs
Thrashes at my pride and response and resolve
But a retort is the instigator
That would turn your wave into a storm
And your storm into your hurricane
But god, my lungs, they vie for air
Coax me:
Say something to subdue him
Say anything
Run away
Breath
And you get right up, right close to my face
Convince me that you’re happy
Convince me that you’re fine
A fine and happy person doesn’t bend to the will of the waves
You can’t coax me out of expiry
And you walk away
Curse yourself
As I come up for air
Smooth the brine from my face and hair
One more time
And ask
Why are your eyes sore
You turn
The tides gone down
The ocean is stiller
Regardless
I still got salt in my eyes

Calcimine
My head is full of blood
Brain is a damp hot piece of meat
**** hot wet useless

Calcimine
My skull is calcium waste
Cranium cradling USDA grade A
****

Calcimine
My heart is knocking on my breastplate
Good, it knows that my body is tainted
It’s a-knock knock knocking at a coach whip pace

Calcimine
Irises flooded by curious pupils
Open wide swell
Absorbing dizzying light

Calcimine
Side lamp belongs on the floor
Shattered stacks smashing objects
At the mercy of my car wash arms

Calcimine
I can feel Satan waiting assured
Ready to accept my blood sack body
Liars and cheats all go to hell

Calcimine
My head is a feverish cardinal
Still my face, though hell awaits, guards the fact
And I do, I drench my febrile skull

Calcimine