I spent the day reading the Kaddish and I keep

staring down at my palms- those lines that remind me of the grooves of my grandfather’s face-

and I was thinking of the hot metal chairs I had mentioned to you in passing when referring to the summer of 79,

and the sweat collection beaded on your neck in my imagination,

sitting in class and sighing heavily.

Why are my eyes stinging then? And my heart an anvil? And suddenly I am flung into 56 and

I am surrounded with peering eyes and checkerboards and bobs and raybans and baggy men’s suits.

Were we talking to the Free Man here? His grooves are in my palms too, that rankness and those beans

those seeds

those foul things come to haunt and taunt me in my sleeplessness, my knee goes up and down in a rhythmic pace, awaiting the click of my delivery,

my entire future in some bottle in space.

You and I are slipping somehow. I feel it. That falling sensation in the pit of your stomach, the rawest.

There was hair in my water. There was paint on the sides.

I heard a goddess laughter and I saw a sock of wine- trailer trash old hicks and yet

where does such divinity derive from?

I never made you promises and yet you insist upon it

and insist upon my eyes my lips my sores my wounds my hands my fingers my crust beneath the nails my bruises my saliva my eyelashes my pace seemed sufficient enough to speak what you wanted without saying the words

- those bastard baby words, born without my consent - set to flames before my eyes and you there

in the center with your tits licked and scorched. I hope those flowers on your body become crusted over in pussing miserable disease before I gouge my eyes out.

What? Can? I? Do? What? Have? I? Done?

I? Am? Constantly? Trying? Yet? I? Always? Seem? To? Spiral? Down?