Speak and Speak

He mentioned telling his room mate
he had some problems with his mental health
and then he looked up at me
to see if I had reacted;

I hadn't flinched.

I hadn't even selfishly thought
about the razors stashed in soap dishes
or the time I jumped from a moving car
or the fantasies I have while on bridges
about finally ejecting fear from my heart.

I just listened to him tell me
it's a waste of energy
to make eye contact with everyone,
and it may even be inconsiderate to
share so openly,
and perhaps a little grotesque
(with out their consent)
to wear my heart on my sleeve.

And it helped.

Then he opened my hand
and put a stone in it,
to add to my collection of days;
placed in equal distances from each other
on every spare surface of my room.

They stack up
til I forget
that they come from the river.
And we are all without faces,
without bodies,
without convenient means
of conveying Identity
when we're in the river.
And we will be from it forever.

I can't seem to remember
because I look down at my body
and I become certain I am separate;
because I look around
and there are years,
and miles,
and the labor of countless vacant peoples
between me and this;
because love, and truth, and beauty
only happen cooperatively
and I just don't have the words,
or the hips, or the clothes
to communicate effectively.

I settle instead, for proof
in a disassociative pudding
made of the bones picked clean
and disassembled from my body
by each strangely dressed boys'
scrawled doctrines
shoved down my throat
while I just think
to take care of the placement of my teeth.

Words I repeat even in my sleep;
fuck me fuck me fuck me

And all the time
I beg the world;
Beat me.
Eat me.
Punish me.

Give Me Meaning for My Suffering.

Watch the current.
Let it overtake my body.
A thousand stones, a room of poems
countless hands on my throat

can't convince me
of my cohesion.

But the dingy plastic walls of this little tub
become blank membranes
where I can see;

A man with his face spotted in stiches
pink exposed flesh
that a cop gave to him,

A little girl laughing at drunken sports fans
speaking to me in spanish
She doesn't believe it's water
in the jar that I'm drinking,

A man who thought he knew me from a party
kiss me goodbye
on the ear and the cheek,

A friend saying I'm intimidating
while my mind bobs and weaves
reasons to believe no one likes me.

I see these as my edges
in the ripples of bath water
quivering to rise and recede.

And I cling to the memory,
As if our connections
were not always ended so briefly
As if all that we fight for
were not won in fleeting victories
As if my dreams weren't just delusions
that I speak and speak
and speak

into these concrete streets.