step.

I will wage myself
across this world
and will step
sure and wary
into the space
between my eyes
and in the teeming
formless darkness
between our minds
--I will tend my garden
the scent confound your nostrils
and when you walk
sometimes the tingle
of distant grasses
under your chin

martyr

... what can I say?
what can
what can
can I-- WHAT
--so let nothing be said
let the words ebb
let the words fall
let them break into gibberish
into irrelevance
into nothingness and sentimentality
no more than a hum
no than the echo
of your pulse, so far under your skin
YES! bind them tight in the forms
and the tropes
and whip them when they struggle
oh shouldn't it be sweet incense?
--see me, Lord! my greatest humility
I praise you lips to the ground
I fill my mouth with dirt,
I swallow it! Lord, Lord!
No ghost, no mourner--I!
but I will choke and walk
dumbly smiling,
I will press hands flesh to flesh
--and aren't all men brothers!
surely, my greatest gift
this silent burial
this unmarked grave
find nothing, in the curve of my smile
to offend the eye! the bone
sheathed in this softness
easily torn! Hallelujah!
and let any reaching
for starlight or cloud-wisps
be brought to book
for the vileness
of hands un-held

... (iv)

because memory fades
I, who am one
who questions all voices
left voiceless
these words, as a sign
and a sigil, to speak
in the tongue
of my mind, these words
to pass by my hearing

kali (ii)

spread your arms
neither welcome
nor surrender
will still
the widening mouths
nor slake the teeth
will be grist

and then will be meal
not made anew

papaya

I would prefer if you didn't
come to my country to burn it.
Why argue over corn
when I grow papayas so well
so many, pebbly and green
that they press the skin of my eyes.

this

this is a gunshot
this is a gurgle,
this is the pull of skin on a knife
this is a howl, trapped
and twisting in the confines
of the sinuses

this is the knees, un-bent
this is the arms, unthrown
this is every hymn I ever cheated the sky

this is the bone scraped clean
and carved lying mute

echo

I will silence myself
for your sake
I will wrap my tongue--and still it
in the contours of foreign syllables
for you--that blind leap
into the fractured wildness
beyond my teeth
left exposed
eloquence confined
the curl of its back
I sent it to huddle
--for your sake
far from my skull

I want your hand
not my reflections
for your sake
this room is empty
and the echoes die away