The Signs of Life

For the love of people

Suppose it’s easy to unbuckle your knuckles

Between the palms of another and it fits

The failure of language is not to witness

But be witnessed

This is how delicate we can be

What do our hands know the way they practice

For a time when words aren’t enough

What of a head nestled between the end

Of your jaw and the run of your shoulder

So earnest your spine melts

Suppose it’s easy to burry yourself in someone else’s skin

What's in a name

To set us apart

Touch binds us

Language blinds us to the power

Of words that were once physical

Holding the hand of my love

Is no different than a stranger

And there’s power in that

A very young man

Who has grown without country

His dreams fleeing all moral courage

And from their ending sweet religion

Lost in rags

In a room without light

My parents cabin

My young friends of old

A priest mortally troubled by the murmur

Of greater freedom

And damnation

I remember even his face

Whose flesh I rolled between my fingers

Monstrous mouth I seized desperate

For the turn of kindness

Visiting a place filled with dust

My body drained to not mold

My eyes burned

My dance ran cold

My exhaustion returned

I collected

My toils

Peeling my old skin

To infuse a spark into

The creature that lay at my feet

Eyes swim with the remembrance

Of summer months passed

Became my asylum

Oppressed by a slow fever

A very young man

Who has grown without country

Beckoning me home

I feel a cold northern

A foretaste

Of Heaven

A favorite dream of mine

As a child

Of my own creation

Neglected

Sometimes I forget to brush my teeth

Because they're already white and don’t patronize

me about the chipped paint.

Sometimes I forget to eat

Because I already ate yesterday and haven't earned my seat

I'll eat when I'm tired but sometimes I forget to sleep

Because my brain cries and says I’m just on the brink of something greater than me

And if I ponder why the squirrels at the park sit

on the bench with me while I read

Or why watching the sunset

Through the windows of the train makes me feel so sad

Maybe I can find peace

Maybe I can stop relying on such simple sounds

and find other words to describe

why my dreams are so empty

Why I force noise to splinter my brain

to resemble thinking

Or why I feel so alive when I'm weak

Why fevers the only time I can write

The doctor said my ears are filled with wax

My lungs are filled with fluids

And my heart shakes for no reason

But mentally I'm free

I say I forget to shower in the morning

Because I like the way my hair curls

when it's filled with grease

What's wrong with me?