i listened and i watched i listened and i watched to the voices cracking the pavement’s song i staggered and i clung to a hundred year old wall to climb the muscles of the streets below well there’s a story of a man from a room so very small he drove the shotgun beneath the vines and above a mountain pass clouds beside my eyes i’ll sing of places i’ll never know what is the staple to this year? throw a smoke bomb and disappear the search for quiet that never comes a sunrise to pull me in subdue the brute within and calm the muscle that won’t return well there’s nothing in my hands balled, shaking in my pockets i’m not tiptoeing on the sun there isn’t any static no storm beneath my lungs hold my eyes level return the smile and sleep will never come to those who won’t rejoice or those who run for windowsills for who could be a guide a partner or a child to one who lingers in empty rooms? well there’s a story of a man from a room so very small he drove the shotgun beneath the vines

the dormant will conspire close your eyes to see the fire and i’ll whisper at the fingerprints it left at the corners of my sleep used to be a foreign shape i could lie among the thorns mixed with nonbelievers’ tales and the starvation for a life but what is it? when the sustain is a moon is a flame stretching, scrambling at what you can’t create? then i built a house to keep the wilderness out i could walk, i could walk the halls and wait the walls were draped with moments cropped into their frames like gilded sideshow souvenirs picked up along the way but what is it? when the ivy fills the doors branches growing through the floors? though we never needed a foundation i think our fortress armed itself. i should get up and fly again walk in circles ‘round the house this is pumping it’s convulsing tear it down well the dirt gave into rain it comes through the rafter space and i am sinking in a pool of my possessions my transgressions floating by i lay on my back and sigh remember when … ? the clock in the hall chimes four remember days before hibernation? you heard beauty in each drop escaped or echo bounced off bricks you’re older now than sound itself despite achievements on the shelf you heckled over their success with everyone you knew why did you cover brass with gold? a salesman advertising mold served with flourishes of twigs and mud and bravery but what is it? when the icicles still hang delighting from the chords you sang with the pride inside ten thousand years of filth and colonizing? when we were young i … and from the hush i … the worms will writhe on blocks of sidewalk glass will sparkle in the tar weeds will push up next to them maybe that’s why you shook with fear i should get up and fly again walk in circles ‘round the house this is nothing. it’s convulsing. tear it down. just tear it down.

drop the pieces baby make them pile up around my grin your wreckage like your jewelry a brash attempt to fuck always sounds a little better in a story well wait a minute child did they catch your last bouquet? did they wait around to see your decay? i wandered through empty hallways echoing my voice off of the teeth off of the dripping stones oh how i’d make my tongue bleed keeping it inside beneath the fifty-thousand reasons you were too tired too poor to lost inside your own desires too famished too bored we were already gone. i am afraid i have this habit where i slowly unstitch all of the threads that i have placed between my ribs and if you catch me in the morning i might ramble just a bit but i never knew my songs could make you grow i used to cower in a corner curled up in a ball while i listened to the jeers about my silence you use your body like an anvil heating it in coal you try to leave a mark between the stains and you could let the blood run smoothly into cavernous repeats or you could lift your shoulder up against the blow i’m not a vessel for a wrench i’m not a pawn i’m not a feather floating on waiting softly smiling slowly for your empty affirmations i am a fox we are a key maybe we tiptoe through the squares of black and white while holding up our arms in waiting and maybe we fold up our fingers and maybe we get on our knees and maybe we place our foreheads to the ground and maybe we used to wash your feet with the same hair we used to cover up but maybe we are finished and maybe we are opening our eyes and opening our mouths go ahead and drop the pieces baby make them pile up around my grin

reality, reality is the brick wall concrete piss smell swelled feet strange letters dark days minotaur methadone haze is the cell phones briefcase coffee face paste rush forward for my needs climb ladders get money when the wind pushes my hair or the alarm squeals when the too-calm woman warns me where i am again when they jostle and elbow when i see Mama and Baby Girl versus the world waiting … waiting … waiting. reality they walked arm in arm and he left her at the stairs and he said, “baby? souveneir?” and she turned her back and glanced at me she rolled her eyes and trudged away still fierce students only where were you and where are you going? the alarm was sounding again i can’t function in this sound and across the tracks going north he grins and plays a standing folk song “this city gets worse and worse,” she says and suddenly we are no longer talking of books and ice cream “i was walking,” she says, “and they were so close to me, and i backed away so it wouldn’t get me. but it could’ve … could’ve gotten me … yea it could’ve. five dollars. five dollars! and he said he paid him …” reality can you see? can you see? “you still making art?” i say and suddenly we are no longer talking about blankets i saw him with his suitcase asking for quarters “i still got that special eye,” he says, “but i stopped seeing … i stopped seeing.”

who are we? who are we? are we a mountain of dreams or tragedies? a pile of screams and tattered teeth? who are we? a young man’s kiss only to exist? to subside? to resist? a temptation of bones and skin? or a wrinkled, capsized sale of him? a begging cry to the pity living inside your empathy? living beside your proximity to the sunken eyes a liturgy for your hollowed flight who are we? the voice rattling buried in your skull when you lower it when you count the swells your clicking tongue counting echoes bouncing through waterways of your lonesome mind he must have sung sometimes pushing his calloused hands and you would swish your socks to make the falling sands and would she hum along clucking on blocks of wood knocking through her throat to resonate but when the fingers changed to gnarled scraps of torched iron that scraped your back branding you to forever shake and forever bleed waiting for the gong to swing who are we? the silent swirl of a body grown cleaning out holes that were left alone when the rhythm fills in the cuts left inside when the rhythm fills in the caverns’ sighs and she cowers sometimes covered up when her fists fly through the spinning air and the blinking beep and the spinal shake but she stretches out, meows and stops the shake and with a whispered strength she said goodbye let go of years of anguished lullabies welcomed in new life and a chest of dreams said, “i forgive you, sir, though i still can hear her screams.” who are we? i was grown before i learned to walk. and my hungry belly taught me to talk. and on the backs of warthogs, the throats of men i left my song with bits of thread i gotta job that keeps me up at night another job to keep me looking bright another job to keep the baby fed and another job i got no time to sleep so if you gotta minute, do you gotta minute? do you gotta minute? sometimes i wish i wrote the epilogue before getting stuck inside this twisted plot but my daughter’s got my eyes and she smiles now so i got this warehouse job and i got this other job to pay the bills and i got no time to sleep because when i fall asleep the shots ring out and when the shots rang the ground was glistening and when the shots rang out out no one was listening and he screamed and screamed; no one was listening and why do you sing if no one’s listening? and why do you sing if no one’s listening? and i say we are a bunch of sprigs tied to each other’s wrists we are a sunflower bending in the wind and your brother’s scream is in my throat just as the rainclouds spoke and your teeth and bones break as the dandelion who is just a weed and she feels her stem break and she cries out a melody to your cracking sound of flesh and as the water pulses in and out you are a rebirth of a drowning house so we sing to let our demons out for we are one heart and i say someone is listening.