Paper Man

Paper Man

Welcome!  My mountains are shattered

look at your kisses stuffed in the gallery

welcome to the map of my horizons

your nakedness      your laughter pour down on me

welcome to my pocket

where I keep verses, wisps of echoes

of your bodies

welcome to my ashtray of hopes

where your stem pours its bitter blood

and I pay for your hugs with deaf pagan prayers

welcome to this garden of houseleeks

Paper man

locked in his steam cage

the servants

arrive with golden trays

as he hides in the corner and moans

I heard your rain voice

on my paper streets

and all I could do was smile

while the ink dripped

blackening my heavy feet.

In our conversation, we pretended

the casual existed in a wall of salt.

I kissed the salt and here I am with thirst,

tense, muddy in my absurd size.

Stay with me while I dissolve

with tears, saliva, sweat,

our painful distance.

The salt wall closes

and the paper man walks away

into a new vastness.

I breathe in trash, whatever is foreign.

and long for the courage

to turn this paper into fire,

to witness my world ablaze

but there’s no fire in my hands.

Incapable of burning,

castrated for the igneous,

another other light surrounds me.