Mates

Mates

You can give birth to an excuse so easily,
you will believe it's always been there.

                                      Saul Williams
                                      Slam

It’s in his hands first and specifically

in his fingers,

the way they twitch and snap

the way they’re forced

to pop because somehow

that’s the nerve he jumps

to charge.  His elbows

on his knees hands and hairy arms

straight out and palm on palm

it's his own way of praying.

But it’s not praying

I can tell you that, instead it’s his one

and only question, even if he knows

the answer, even if words get in,

they just need to feel it

coming out, or see it, if

there’s a mirror or a night

window between the teeth.

I get it.  It might be me,

in a few months, sitting on the bottom

bunk, tongue stuck in the rut

under my skull where a few days

before I came in the dentist pulled

the baddest tooth.   I clench but my mate,

he don't ask.

And later I won’t ask him either.  You just

know by the way the jaw goes

rigid to twitch, rigid to twitch…

it’s knowing to keep it shut

having the balls to swallow

the silence and move aside

while the top bunk sags

and that stiff whiff a wave

of piss drifts through the weave

of rusty springs 
and it’s the new perfume

of distraction in this cell of a room.