This is the first piece I’ve written with the intention of spoken word. And there must be that intention or else nothing I write is meant to be heard. I felt such fleeting conviction after listening to Ebony Stewart. And listening to her again reminds me to be more scared of not trying than the impediment so often keeping my poetry trapped inside.

I don’t know how to do this
	how do I say what I wrote
        when I can’t even speak what I think?
Writing comes easy – sometimes
I feel the fraud when my pen scrawls
	yet my metaphoric mentalese is
	picturesque
Still my tongue slips – trips over translation

Read this and find my voice in the curves 
         my tone in the drift
         your emotions evoked 
by my hand – I would have you
examine the contents connecting body and mind
you would feel – from my hands
        my frustration at miscommunication
	echoes from the mouth 
of the caverns that keep me

Strike a match and see my visceral cathedral
	watch the walls gleam
	like shattered glass
let me feel what you feel – keep me
bleeding along the edges of my mineral luster
	carve out what you can
	hold me to your heart
let me listen to the sacred symmetry

A pain worth bearing to know you 
        don’t listen to what I say
        find me entombed in the page
by your hand – I would have you
listen to the walls singing earthsongs in their veins
I can feel – through your hands
	shimmering ley lines pulsing 
        the mountain mother’s blood
her heart is our own

I would have you – within confines of my mind
	hear me in your hands
follow my curves to where we shine
deep within these words that trap me inside