1. I’ve whittled shelves into my body to try and bring an
order to things. All it did was make space.
So many shelves like staircases built in anger.
Winding forcefully
until they end right where I stand.
2. There are days I wash my face with vinegar
and soak my fists in horse ***** I use it to
conceal the musty smell of forgotten Bibles.
3. It’s while God is in my novels,
that I see my bedroom floor.
A junkyard of loose-leaf prayers,
my boots go out of their way to step on
dry crunchy ones.
I can hear the breaking, and it’s satisfying.
The acrid smell of fall
in my mouth,
I bite my lip just to feel the sting.
4. The phantom pain in my chest tastes like cotton
stuck to my teeth.
5. I am Leonid Rogozov in Antarctica, I’ve built my
staircase-shelves by cutting into myself,
only local-numbness needed.
6. No, my shelves are not staircases.
Shelves never extend forward. Just, upward.
A little too much like trees,
not permanent enough in the ground.
7. It all reduces to sawdust anyway, collected
on the bedroom floor.
I’ve been sweeping it up for 40 days now,
each day, a little more.
One day, the floor will be clean.
8. You say, “You are made of blessings.” I say, “No, I’m made of blood
and skeleton bones.”
9. I love You. You say you love me.
Some days, that’s enough.
10. Today, Just yellow-
brown pages and
nothing resembling gospels.
11. I wasn’t born, I just walked in
one quiet evening and started living
12. After every shelf I whittle I still ask,
What is numbered in my life?
13. Things will change, things will change.
Things will change.
14. I have layers and layers of papier-mâché skins you can thumb
through like pages.
You’ve peeled them away,
each becoming more raw and permanent.
The cleanliness worries me.
15. There are 17 different kinds of fractures:
non-displaced, complete, oblique, transverse, comminuted, greenstick,
simple, linear, incomplete, compound, compacted, avulsion,
compression, stress, impacted, displaced, spiral and fatigue.
Believing in You makes me tired.
16. ‘Post mortem nihil, ipsaque mors nihil’
Death built its own shelves
After My body was felled.
17. When it’s you resting on my tree-shelves,
I begin to see an end.
Books are the most efficient weapons in the world.