I'm ***** once again.
Grime that was once scrubbed away
has crawled back onto my skin
and made itself at home.
As if it never left.

Avoiding the eyes, the arms and legs
the charity seller eagerly awaiting
I look about but all I see is a sea of bodies
polluting the streets, the skies, their minds
move on
making noise, make less noise
fill the silence
take a breath of air, all the way down
take a pause
there's time
no need to rush around
pounding the chewing gum streets
The grime of life is on your skin now
embedded in the layers of filth
the coffee stains and late night bars
the early starts and frown lines of life
are on your face now
that's life now
make change and waves in the noise that was your life
where silence pounds the chewing gum streets of your mind.

I got braces when I was 16
that year I never kissed anyone
but I made boys steal things from pricy bookstores
I measure time by my teeth
every year they get more crooked
the older I get they seem to shift back to old territory
old habits
old

now even smoking cigarettes feels boring
when I walk into bookstores
I leave sticky notes with advice I wish someone would have told me then

they did
but maybe if I had found it somewhere I was looking
I might have paid more attention
my retainer sits in a shelf collecting grime

reaching deep down in
grime between your nails, between your fingers
trying to reach all the way down but
your arm doesnt reach/ your arm doesnt reach/ your arm doesnt–
but you still reach
because there has to be something within your reach
instead, something reaches you
your arm is no longer there
a jagged toothed thing took it away
  
…
  
you reach in with your other arm

Innocence
becomes
passe
Sin again
within
favor
Gestures of genuine penance,
all shall be refused
Jaded to the long term touch
I shall now renew
Sin
     Again
               Within
                           Favor
Sin
     Again
               to
                  Favor
Balcony beckons escape to only fetishists' invites
God would not rain *** and skin in test
So
   Remain
                Godless

A raga of another time, from another day,
plays in the head:
grime of the day, stuck on my hands.

You shot an arrow across the eastern skies.
Senora, a hundred cries you carry
in your womb, yet I never
found you in the peasant woman
in whose arms I fell asleep, when
at noon you disappear at the horizon.

Maiden of the moons, at dusk I lost you
to the trail of lotuses blooming westward.

It is raining in gusts but this storm
cannot wash it away:
Guilt, like turmeric, stains the soul.