These are my words from my lips,
this weak human sound.
I pray your ears catch them
before the deaf ground.
Everyone gather round.
I’ll sell you songs of my sickness,
make these brick walls my witness.
Lend me your ears, be made privy.
It’s not much, so forgive me,
just what the good Lord could give me.
Lend me your hands
so for a moment, you can live me

Join me in my quest to find truth
lost somewhere deep within my youth
never remembered:
thoughts forever dismembered

Lend me your eyes.
I’ll show you
Thin hands of a man
with words sharp
as broken pull tabs on beer cans.
Words kicked a boot through my bedroom door.
Join me
on the floor, hidden under my bed
in the dead
of winter.
Lend me your ears.
Hear the cheap wood splinter

Join me in memory of a boiling chest.
Flames drip down lungs
as words sizzle on my tongue
and hang from my teeth tips.
Touch my throat,
feel words scream behind stitched lips:
truth never spoken
in a home beat,
but not quite broken.

Lend me your ears,
but I warn you,
words hurt more than any balled fist.
Join me today.
Feel my youthful brain twist in the lull
and retract in this
turtle shell skull

I was the little boy with
way too much to say.
The back-of-the-class voice
making teachers’ patience fray
every day

I wasn’t a bad kid!
I just felt the warmth of the sun in my feet
and unrelenting energy in my tongue:
the urge to
speak
The class clown inside wanted out and I let it.
Nothing felt as good as a laugh on your lips
and I’d do anything to get it.

Lend me your flesh.
Feel my fire inside.
Limbs swung in frustration
half calmed by
daily medication.
Close your eyes,
feel the rush of raw fury,
the wish to feel feet
pound on pavement,
to push behind the world
that had forever told me to
SIT STILL.

and I’d kill
to not care.
Feel the lift of the cool midnight air
in my pores,
nothing above but the stars.

I wish to wash the glow from my mind
just a blank slate running free
with the wind
free to wind.

I want to rise from this
Earth,
This big dead ball of dirt.

Quench the thirst
for new beginnings.
Sweep these clothes from my skin,
thick with the scent of sinnings.
Kill the glow of emotion,
my mental commotion.
How many times must my heart break
for you
and you
and you?
Bring back the faith of my youth
and my mountains moved.

I WANT SILENCE!

Let me breathe.
Let me feel nothing
but the breeze
I’m always feeling something.
Just let me feel
nothing

and just listen.
Lend me your ears.
I’ll sell you my weaknesses
of 18 long years.
With these brick walls as my witness,
hear my heart beat
in its slim shriveled sickness.
I know it’s not much,
just what the good Lord could give me.
Lend me your hands
and for a moment
You’ll live me