who is it?

I am giving I am out I am

all things but within.

From me pour inky darks,

sludge prose,

syllables that don’t let you go

but don’t make you better.

But why always me?

What, really, do I have to do

with it?

Shall I compare thee to a wait-

ing crowd, a mass of thinning

scalps with my fate in their

pink palms?

Shall I call you father, call you

mother, call you sister, call you

lover?

Shall I call, do I want an answer,

because what if it’s her?

Asking me to account?

Reading,

in a perfectly even voice,

the record of my actions?

Not hate, not sneering nor gnashing,

but perfect neutrality,

a voice devoid,

knowing the weight of the words

hammered by deeds, hammered

into deeds,

to be plenty?

Shall I sever the line,

shall I rip cords from walls,

rip walls from foundations,

rip free, rip free,

so that never will that voice

find me,

ask me,

after all read and wrote,

if I’ve changed?

If I’ve changed one thing,

one bit?

If I’ve learned sorry

from sex

from shush, now, mind;

if I’ve changed one damn thing,

one fucking thing,

(and now the voice picks up speed,

now the voice knows me,

really)

or if I’ve shuffled the furniture

and found a new zip code

and fastened myself a face

for the faces I meet

and said,

“Who is it?”

Shall I rip feet from feet,

rip teeth from gum,

bleed and take it and show,

say,

“Look:

it moves”?

Shall I disturb another ear

with a tongue

hairy as this,

taught and bought,

believing it worth your while,

wagging from a new

face, while

ain’t a damn fucking thing

changed behind the eyes?

Shall I dare,

ask that of any,

especially once they know?

Once they’ve heard the word

of the line

on speakerphone?

Ripped from wall

but louder, for all,

for those in the back

who might not’ve heard:

He’s a piece of shit

and he knows it

and still he wants you to hear him,

as if your time

cares for itself

as little as he does him?

Come around

gather around

get in close:

this motherfucker wants you to hear him.

Shall I?

Or shall I do

what anyone who’s gotten this far

would want me to do

and shut

the fuck

up?

***

You are tired

you are weary

you are crossing streams

and fording hours

and carrying lives

in a basket

on your head.

You are a thousand

things to a thousand

people.

You are halfway home

somewhere cold

and smelling of laundry,

you don’t want to stay

any more than we do.

You are born on,

born ahead,

clear only of what’s just

behind, maybe

a yard or two,

before it’s swallowed

and ahead yawns rent

yawns the next cold block

and the next

and the wet laundry

in the wet air

hurrying, hurrying.

You are a thousand sorts,

out of a thousand sorts,

all, totally, wholeheartedly

out of sorts.

You are as you ever were

and, basically,

you’re busy.

When along comes a boy

knowing himself to be a

hurter of people,

a hurter of women,

a spit and crumble and leave

for the next

type boy;

along comes he,

self-aware of himself as such

and equally unabsolved;

here he comes

through the laundry cold

through the thousand

worries hung cross your

thousand issues

and thousand otherwises, what-

evers, and not nows,

here he comes, leans, and asks:

“Listen to me.”