new space
I have never slept in.
Windows are shut
to keep rain from damaging
my bamboo floors.
The smell of new paint
covers me like the sheet
that drapes over one leg, July heat.
Everything in here is foreign, I have trouble
sleeping, surrounded by walls that will never know me
as much as I will get to know them.
I try to sleep in my new place
longing for old
comfort.
A bookcase full of magnetic voices
that call to my metal brain, wanting me to read
them all at once.
Voices of wisdom, despair, try to get me
to do something
I don’t want to do, be.
I am kept company by a single LED light
that lets me see
what I’m writing, while I try
and ignore what I’m thinking.
CRUMBS
A bed of empty inferior.
A box of almost empty cereal
littered with bottomless dust.
Delicate crunches
are not as loud
as a ceiling
that sleeps on top of me
with the weighted pressure
of those who have knocked
on my bedroom door once
and never returned.
A half-made bed.
A half piece of toast
covered with nothing,
but artificial truth.
I share an empty coffee cup
with the woman
who has yet to tell me good morning.
I still kiss her goodbye,
wish her a good day,
and tell her that I will see her soon.
DAMPNESS
Sheets from a restless summer night
stick like American Cheese
to the knees, to the thing that pees.
Where the air is too hot to move
and cover me, bashful breeze.
Skin tickled and teased, coated
with missed opportunities of yesterday.
Parts of last night’s dream hang
on the back of my bathroom door
inside of a towel that begs
to keep its feet on the ground, to walk
without sound.
Birds hidden in trees
train me how to listen.
Lowered blinds on adjacent windows
teach me how to wonder. I follow light
like others follow night. I move fast,
sun rises slow. I’m anxious to go, so,
walkways and sidewalks
will feel my trails first
and remember them before
they get covered in cluttered layers
of misdirection.
I am next to him, side-by-side
with the man who delivers newspapers
to empty lobbies, trying not to disappear
as the day goes on like puddles in the street
left by 5:00 A.M. sprinklers.
FAMILIAR HANDS
I know by the way Eastern White Pines dance
on my ceiling in dawn,
by the way the sky opens her grey eyes.
I know by the way showers behind my walls
erupt like opened fire hydrants,
by the 747’s blinking red lights
that appear in my window
every morning at 4:50.
I know by the way the 96 bus releases a big breath
before it’s ready to lift people to work, by the elevator
ding called by the overnight security guard
who lives across from me.
I know by the way the maintenance man’s wheels sink in cracks
of the foundation rolling away from the trash shoot,
by the way it doesn’t feel right
to be here on my back any longer.
I know by the way distant doors down the hallway
open and close, by the smell of diri kolé ak pwa that crawls underneath my door.
I know by the taste in my mouth
and by the sand that stacks itself
in the corner of my eye
