In These Walls
I hollowed out a spoon, spoke through it to you
my voice broadcasting blips and static vinyl lips like an old Victrola
blowing heat through our home
memories through these bellies
tipsy straight whiskeys through honeys and sons
time can blindfold my ribcage, de-language my tongue
for all these floorboards eventually bust open, breathe, swallow
forget me
from the attic to the pantry
when the record skips, the record skips, the fumbling lips
the draperies bellow with ghosts
I will still echolocate your heartbeat in these walls.
In these walls the stairwell swells with silver song
my fingers tap along the railing with the spirit of Gregory Hines
as pareidolias shine through the panes
I plastered on the ceiling precisely how that easy lemon in the sky looked the night I first met you
encouraging me to catch you
how it haloed over your roof as if it was proof
this is our promised land
where our holy-holies and heathens can come together
in a marriage of ritual seducing tradition without judgment
let the good feelings, the no regrets, the rebuilt self-esteems
relax, breathe, swallow.
These walls contain moments: my moments.
Like that time I was so high
my face felt like a mush of something between oatmeal and butter
how it poured into the quark-speckled bowl of the cosmos
filling in cracks with quantum abstracts, the world ceasing to stutter.
Like the day I helped my roommate’s cat put a mouse’s life to an end
only to realize all I had done was kill the cat’s best friend
it spent a week lamenting in the basement, never purred for me again
and I can’t say I blame it so.
Like when I learned Jimmy Eat World is not Earthworm Jim
and Jack said, the worms eat away,
but don't worry, watch the wind
Yeah, the worms eat away, but don’t worry, watch the wind
I awoke, I arose
this drowsy sleeper from the night’s Plutonian shore
skip the ol’ Medora, skip the roaring deep
lay down the waltzed Matilda
I know the lost Lenore is a home I’ll never be
for you are with me in these walls.
Life and death are in these walls
the laughing baby on a blue towel
how it melts into the mattress
our bedroom gives birth to generations
as children in the clawfoot tub
slide on their soapy suds into a valley of imaginary water
now the artist dreams with us
but the mailbox keeps half its promises
each letter keeps asking, What is power?
so an empty mother keeps tossing them into the pink and yellow room
with the ever-made bed of petrified dolls and teddy bears
she knows this is where the answer lies, she knows
power is when the last act on this Earth of a 5-year-old girl dying of cancer
was to simply draw a butterfly taking flight from a flower
that is power
and you can still hear her fluttering in these walls.
Sometimes I ramble these darkened halls wondering what it is to be my grandfather
with antique eyes, elder mind washed out by the sunlight
colors so bright the glint found them too precious to let go
I once spotted Grandpa’s legs in the fireplace, in a game of hide-and-go-seek
where my sister and I would compete against the naps that stalled our adventures
making us drunk with dreams we still don’t understand
we’d let Grandpa fall asleep
then sneak back to our jungle gym fantasies
juiced up on the sandwiched eggs he’d let us eat for a treat while watching the “Price is Right”
where I would sit puzzling over Plinko chips and how my grandfather wound up in the fireplace
when I swear I saw him go down into the cellar
I think about his journey through the crawl space
how every partition I’ve ever put my ear to since traces the memory of him
that memory now climbs through these walls
just as I am climbing with you
your furnace toasts these humbled toes, the vents are hoarding lost receipts
with pillows poised on our teeth we brush beliefs with tiny feathers
to rustle forth some intricate heirloom that swings from the ceiling lamps
sings obscene nursery chants, enjoys getting fatter,
poses naked on a cake platter until it’s frozen in a portrait on the family wall
prompting us to have faith in our sofa cushion forts
to put brand-new skate marks on our linoleum floor
to let the dining room dance free-form
dizzy dishes spooling spaghetti around the sconces
those China-chipped nuances our hearts would like to know
they zip arias across the table, there is mezzo in our matzo
stomachs listen to pasta operas just as I am listening for you.
Your voice is in these walls
so I will tear them down and take them with me
my fingers puncturing drywall, perforating whatever circumference my arms can reach
like a wild creature I’ll run through this house collecting ripped-out slabs for the pile
wallpapered continents stacked like flapjacks
snapping off in lightning cracks
as I burrow through these rooms where you are bound trying to save you
before the primordial sledge hammer condemns every piece of you to the ground
I want your splinters in my skin, your gypsum powder in my hair
want to carry it all with the nectar intact
this honey bee to a new hive
pollinating the roots, stashing fruit inside
crumbling continents between mortar and pestle
the aroma from the dust being breathed in, swallowed, stinging me
both causing and curing homesickness at the same time
I’ll mix the wetness from my eyes with dirt and clay
discover in it new walls with a new living room, new kitchen, second floor,
clothes, sheets, bookshelves, hot chocolates, and heartbeats
let me run through those rooms bellowing my existence
my jaw is hungry for joy, my fists for any future
I live for soft lips and laughter, for severe thunderstorm warnings and the puddles left after
for the brave words that survive seasons of lonely mutters
for stuttering brothers with shy affections, for the women who promise to love them
for the bakie wakie muncheons, the wheat penny collections
and the stranger-than-fictions embedded in me
I will share them with you, explore them through and through
wear out my feet walking room to room
secure within your structure
searching for treasure maps and wisdom
approaching each night like it’s the first light of day
we hide and we go seek
I love how getting lost in you is the same as finding my way!
The vinyl smells like peppermint. Let the record play.
I curl up to the newel post, puff unswept cat hair down a flight of stairs
it drifts away like delicate years into the foyer’s vast embrace.
I carry it all with me in a snow globe.
Never a day goes by I don’t look inside and see
my stay here was exactly the length it was supposed to be.
In these walls: Home.
What Color is Your Face?
What color is your face?
Look around you.
What color is your face?
Your eyes love your nose.
They have never been strangers.
Your cheekbones are where you hang canvas paintings.
Your mouth discovered each one of your teeth along the infinite galleries of chance
and made them true.
The ways of the face are beautiful.
Every human face—beautiful.
But as I write this pigment, tone, and complexion are bleeding together in the street.
What color is your face?
Is your face the color of constitution? Of equality?
The color of liberty and justice for all who have money?
For all who want you to feel their fear of change?
For all those self-evident preamblers in power
who want to control a woman’s body,
who want their religion as the norm,
who think they have a right to wield destructive devices with which no one is born?
How was the first school shooting not enough to say No More?
Is your face pro-life only until that life is old enough for kindergarten?
Does your face understand its own words?
Did your face cause our jaws to drop and shatter on the curb?
Does it rage against the unknown?
Against turbans and kufis and prayers unlike your own?
Did it let a handful of extremists speak for millions who disagree?
Does your face hate geography?
Does your face just want to bomb their whole fucking country?
Is that the Gilded Rule: Kill unto others before others can kill unto you?
Is one bad student enough to burn all the classrooms, every sister and brother?
Is your face the color of I Will Crush Your Bones Between My Fingers?
As I write this the news is like some screwed up Dr. Seuss.
One face, two face, red face, blue face.
Does your face deny privilege?
Does your face believe in war?
Or does your face perhaps give just a couple damns more?
Is your face red, white, and blue?
Well his face was blue, too, but so blue it turned our faces green.
Do you understand why we raise our hands when we can’t breathe?
So that our voice still has sound!
Because how many hands up does it take for you to put your arms down?
And for those faces who believe we have nothing to fix,
who echo the hate from political machines like a well-trained parrot,
who are born, raised, then glued to a small town mindset and fuzzy TVs,
who can easily brand decent people as animals or scum,
or see anything less than two Americas,
I have a suggestion: Travel, then speak.
But if your face is the color of civil justice,
of hope and humility,
if your face contains hundreds of years of slavery
colored in by a cry for freedom,
if your face is the color of love even for your enemies,
then Je suis la liberté d’expression
and you are the dream!
As I write this there are children being murdered in the streets.
I hollowed out a spoon, spoke through it to you
my voice broadcasting blips and static vinyl lips like an old Victrola
blowing heat through our home
memories through these bellies
tipsy straight whiskeys through honeys and sons
time can blindfold my ribcage, de-language my tongue
for all these floorboards eventually bust open, breathe, swallow
forget me
from the attic to the pantry
when the record skips, the record skips, the fumbling lips
the draperies bellow with ghosts
I will still echolocate your heartbeat in these walls.
In these walls the stairwell swells with silver song
my fingers tap along the railing with the spirit of Gregory Hines
as pareidolias shine through the panes
I plastered on the ceiling precisely how that easy lemon in the sky looked the night I first met you
encouraging me to catch you
how it haloed over your roof as if it was proof
this is our promised land
where our holy-holies and heathens can come together
in a marriage of ritual seducing tradition without judgment
let the good feelings, the no regrets, the rebuilt self-esteems
relax, breathe, swallow.
These walls contain moments: my moments.
Like that time I was so high
my face felt like a mush of something between oatmeal and butter
how it poured into the quark-speckled bowl of the cosmos
filling in cracks with quantum abstracts, the world ceasing to stutter.
Like the day I helped my roommate’s cat put a mouse’s life to an end
only to realize all I had done was kill the cat’s best friend
it spent a week lamenting in the basement, never purred for me again
and I can’t say I blame it so.
Like when I learned Jimmy Eat World is not Earthworm Jim
and Jack said, the worms eat away,
but don't worry, watch the wind
Yeah, the worms eat away, but don’t worry, watch the wind
I awoke, I arose
this drowsy sleeper from the night’s Plutonian shore
skip the ol’ Medora, skip the roaring deep
lay down the waltzed Matilda
I know the lost Lenore is a home I’ll never be
for you are with me in these walls.
Life and death are in these walls
the laughing baby on a blue towel
how it melts into the mattress
our bedroom gives birth to generations
as children in the clawfoot tub
slide on their soapy suds into a valley of imaginary water
now the artist dreams with us
but the mailbox keeps half its promises
each letter keeps asking, What is power?
so an empty mother keeps tossing them into the pink and yellow room
with the ever-made bed of petrified dolls and teddy bears
she knows this is where the answer lies, she knows
power is when the last act on this Earth of a 5-year-old girl dying of cancer
was to simply draw a butterfly taking flight from a flower
that is power
and you can still hear her fluttering in these walls.
Sometimes I ramble these darkened halls wondering what it is to be my grandfather
with antique eyes, elder mind washed out by the sunlight
colors so bright the glint found them too precious to let go
I once spotted Grandpa’s legs in the fireplace, in a game of hide-and-go-seek
where my sister and I would compete against the naps that stalled our adventures
making us drunk with dreams we still don’t understand
we’d let Grandpa fall asleep
then sneak back to our jungle gym fantasies
juiced up on the sandwiched eggs he’d let us eat for a treat while watching the “Price is Right”
where I would sit puzzling over Plinko chips and how my grandfather wound up in the fireplace
when I swear I saw him go down into the cellar
I think about his journey through the crawl space
how every partition I’ve ever put my ear to since traces the memory of him
that memory now climbs through these walls
just as I am climbing with you
your furnace toasts these humbled toes, the vents are hoarding lost receipts
with pillows poised on our teeth we brush beliefs with tiny feathers
to rustle forth some intricate heirloom that swings from the ceiling lamps
sings obscene nursery chants, enjoys getting fatter,
poses naked on a cake platter until it’s frozen in a portrait on the family wall
prompting us to have faith in our sofa cushion forts
to put brand-new skate marks on our linoleum floor
to let the dining room dance free-form
dizzy dishes spooling spaghetti around the sconces
those China-chipped nuances our hearts would like to know
they zip arias across the table, there is mezzo in our matzo
stomachs listen to pasta operas just as I am listening for you.
Your voice is in these walls
so I will tear them down and take them with me
my fingers puncturing drywall, perforating whatever circumference my arms can reach
like a wild creature I’ll run through this house collecting ripped-out slabs for the pile
wallpapered continents stacked like flapjacks
snapping off in lightning cracks
as I burrow through these rooms where you are bound trying to save you
before the primordial sledge hammer condemns every piece of you to the ground
I want your splinters in my skin, your gypsum powder in my hair
want to carry it all with the nectar intact
this honey bee to a new hive
pollinating the roots, stashing fruit inside
crumbling continents between mortar and pestle
the aroma from the dust being breathed in, swallowed, stinging me
both causing and curing homesickness at the same time
I’ll mix the wetness from my eyes with dirt and clay
discover in it new walls with a new living room, new kitchen, second floor,
clothes, sheets, bookshelves, hot chocolates, and heartbeats
let me run through those rooms bellowing my existence
my jaw is hungry for joy, my fists for any future
I live for soft lips and laughter, for severe thunderstorm warnings and the puddles left after
for the brave words that survive seasons of lonely mutters
for stuttering brothers with shy affections, for the women who promise to love them
for the bakie wakie muncheons, the wheat penny collections
and the stranger-than-fictions embedded in me
I will share them with you, explore them through and through
wear out my feet walking room to room
secure within your structure
searching for treasure maps and wisdom
approaching each night like it’s the first light of day
we hide and we go seek
I love how getting lost in you is the same as finding my way!
The vinyl smells like peppermint. Let the record play.
I curl up to the newel post, puff unswept cat hair down a flight of stairs
it drifts away like delicate years into the foyer’s vast embrace.
I carry it all with me in a snow globe.
Never a day goes by I don’t look inside and see
my stay here was exactly the length it was supposed to be.
In these walls: Home.
What Color is Your Face?
What color is your face?
Look around you.
What color is your face?
Your eyes love your nose.
They have never been strangers.
Your cheekbones are where you hang canvas paintings.
Your mouth discovered each one of your teeth along the infinite galleries of chance
and made them true.
The ways of the face are beautiful.
Every human face—beautiful.
But as I write this pigment, tone, and complexion are bleeding together in the street.
What color is your face?
Is your face the color of constitution? Of equality?
The color of liberty and justice for all who have money?
For all who want you to feel their fear of change?
For all those self-evident preamblers in power
who want to control a woman’s body,
who want their religion as the norm,
who think they have a right to wield destructive devices with which no one is born?
How was the first school shooting not enough to say No More?
Is your face pro-life only until that life is old enough for kindergarten?
Does your face understand its own words?
Did your face cause our jaws to drop and shatter on the curb?
Does it rage against the unknown?
Against turbans and kufis and prayers unlike your own?
Did it let a handful of extremists speak for millions who disagree?
Does your face hate geography?
Does your face just want to bomb their whole fucking country?
Is that the Gilded Rule: Kill unto others before others can kill unto you?
Is one bad student enough to burn all the classrooms, every sister and brother?
Is your face the color of I Will Crush Your Bones Between My Fingers?
As I write this the news is like some screwed up Dr. Seuss.
One face, two face, red face, blue face.
Does your face deny privilege?
Does your face believe in war?
Or does your face perhaps give just a couple damns more?
Is your face red, white, and blue?
Well his face was blue, too, but so blue it turned our faces green.
Do you understand why we raise our hands when we can’t breathe?
So that our voice still has sound!
Because how many hands up does it take for you to put your arms down?
And for those faces who believe we have nothing to fix,
who echo the hate from political machines like a well-trained parrot,
who are born, raised, then glued to a small town mindset and fuzzy TVs,
who can easily brand decent people as animals or scum,
or see anything less than two Americas,
I have a suggestion: Travel, then speak.
But if your face is the color of civil justice,
of hope and humility,
if your face contains hundreds of years of slavery
colored in by a cry for freedom,
if your face is the color of love even for your enemies,
then Je suis la liberté d’expression
and you are the dream!
As I write this there are children being murdered in the streets.