Phone call: pieces of

sentences alternately --


pasted together.

The first time I met them,
I was met with silence;
These who did not speak.
They were unfamiliar with communication.
They were silent, but pondering beasts.
They looked up to me
With eyes full of fear.
Such beautiful innocence
When you lashed out at me,
For you were only trying to protect yourself
At what you perceived as dangerous.
But I placed my hand on your shoulder,
I rested my head against yours.
In your confusion,
I embraced you.

As a little child

I already cried and laughed:


don't leave me alone.

The blind man answers,

politely, all the questions --


not put to him, though.

I speak carefully,

so it doesn't wake her up while --


she listens to me.

I can already

scold in this language, now I'm --


learning the sweet words.

She says nothing, there's

just a kind of sigh, a groan --


that makes me happy.

I communicate through songs and poems,
gestures and strings and keys and underlines
fewer words, rather melodies to follow
articulating my thoughts
better than I ever could

In the time it took me to start over
I died by your side with closure
on my self-imposed solitude
from every soul in a fighting mood
with inherited axes to grind
in line
to use the men’s bathroom
during the last game,
immune to the toxic byproducts
of extended cab pick-up trucks
circling the drain of
made up
settling sentiment trickling
through the air connecting
you lungs with mine,
an irredeemable line
in the low tide sand
and
inescapable memory holes
fret the yet again brethren
sending their regards
while they take up arms
against mended fences
wrestling
with a cost,
the interest,
and late fees eternal
grown from the infernal
jest we let foment
into rent checks and
a stale hex
revealed next
to nothing
in a book I did not write
that you read all the same