Some things I once swore were etched into my brain Have disintegrated like tape decay Echos crack through But the sounds mix with others They were there though once Unlike the phantom bruise from the lover’s punch Which I knew the next day Would be tender to the touch But wasn’t In the darkened mirror on the day Toni died Finger pressed to cheek expecting it To collapse like the softest part Of a rotten peach I’ve sometimes borne the brunt Of a lover’s pain spilling out And some lessons I’ve learned past due And others unfairly bore the weight The calluses on my hands Never were from praying, by the way Though my mother would cross herself When she kissed me goodnight And whisper at her mother’s grave When she dropped me at the school She was buried one parking space And a fence away from the playground Where I first learned what it meant When your body is a nesting doll And somewhere inside is the end No, the calluses were from the palms split at the seams Violence made to please and harden They have made and unmade rooms Been broken open in destruction And repurposed in creation Once, they held a set of hands Too small to even intertwine fingers And taught it to write their name Made ourselves into robots By putting shopping baskets on our heads And painted our lips to become mirrors She spent a summer sleeping in the bed I slept on at her age Her name for me A pedal tone to all I do now Returning and returning Escape just requires a key Mahmoud was right Sometimes jail keepers beg for their freedom From those who they’ve held captive And sometimes we are dynamite I miss the one whose skin was the same as mine I miss the one who gave me my name I am guilty and repentant of so many things I am absolved and unrepentant of so many others These hands that once held theirs would like to be of use The memories of what they can do have not faded They split my palms and yours to take something precious from us That we don’t have words for anymore, but we try and find it anyway Exhausted, trying to shield our eyes from the glare Of all the violence bouncing off more violence To try and make sense of the world Violence made for those who plan our obsolescence These hands would like to be of use with yours Somewhere, a hand split from making ends meet Somewhere, another, seams in all our bodies bursting They split my palms and yours But when we sutured each other We hid keys in those wounds Inside others, dynamite Inside others, thread and needle Safety found together in planned obstinance Absolved and unrepentant When we learned to grow food to eat Near the end of our time Life winks and nods at us With roles to assign First, all plants and animals Excluding mankind Will be shuttled like astronauts So just form a line Good people must hurry on Get as far as you can Make computers and alcohol Soon, we’ll talk again Carpets were cleaner then To sit and relax Now, there’s streets, and apartments And a federal tax Explosions in sago Versus trailer park labs Making homemade insulin With what little they have Treat killing an arab With ssris Short-selling coffins Kick sand in our eyes So, just draw funny pictures Of people in suits Grown men using toothpicks To poke at the truth Belief in conspiracy Illusory walls The world is disgusting But truth in it all Hang what I say to you In the magneted fridge And cut all the curses You said in front of kids Come 50 years after now With a limitless globe The terror of savagery Now you’re coming back home Come off and fall So that I can pick you up Our homes are not The kinds of places you’d own Come off and fall So that I can pick you up They rose and shook I barely stood They rose and shook The blood off The objects we’re locked in Immobile and violent Just fewer like that You were afraid It seems the last 40 minutes Were spent leading up to this You’re just a stranger in a t-shirt to me Time wore holes in my memory What have you given Just to be able To get closer To being alive with nothing left But this song And the end of it? You believe in something watching over I think they have a sick sense of humor As quickly as it happens, they forget Then, it happens again And again, and again, and again You cry at the news, I just turn it off They say there’s nothing we can do, and it never stops You believe in a God watching over I think the world’s fucked up and brutal Senseless violence With no guiding light I can’t live like this But I'm not ready to die The world is a beautiful place But we have to make it that way Whenever you find home We’ll make it more than just a shelter If everyone belongs there It will hold us all together If you’re afraid to die Then so am I