Strip tease poetry and
The scars left
by the thesaurus--

I take books back to
my bed room like dog-eared boys--
like bent binding and 
sun-worn page-- No I don't
want to code you in Dewy decimals--
tattoo numbers up and
down your back so I know 
where to find you again--
I don't borrow books like everyone
else you know? This is dangerous--
I'm thief and I'm here
to tell you that the only
way you can ever love something
is purloined and peeled free 
of numbers-- 
Your place is under my pillow
or stacked neatly
on my shelves-- call me
your bookend-- and I'll
hold you sturdy-- I don't care if
you've lived your whole life
as a dictionary-- oh I can
make love with any piles of words
even if they're insisting 
on being alphabetical-- I've fucked
enough thesauruses to be done with
trying to find a new way to say things
I frame my anatomy from whatever 
your pages want to share with me-- 
I'll touch your torso in trochees
and make iambs across
your forearms if you want 
to read-- I don't just take pages--
I take cliff hangers and
last words-- make them into
the first lines and epigrams 
another free verse on a rain arrested
windowsill-- 
unroll indexes from the backs
of old psychological guide books--
they can diagnose me accurate enough--
hysteria-- obsession-- neurosis--
I'm compulsed to steal your verse
-- unthread it from
the pages and drop couplets
in tea cups-- my synonymatic sugar cubes--
I know the teeth of thesaurus 
sometimes make me illegible
but love can only exist in ambiguity--
This is a strip tease for you-- I'll
let you see what dust jackets are for--
loving books is an act of self-harm--
And we were all possessed before
we became a possession-- a pocket
full of dead white men words
I keep trying to use to make
this body a love poem-- read the code
on my spin-- Yell my name as a call number-- 
take me back to a shelf where
I sleep between 1950s almanacs--   
I can't part with a paged
I've already kissed again and again--
and these words are my words now--
even if they're scarred over and
over in red margin ink from
what the thesaurus did to pervert me--
Did we ever own a word or were
we just speaking for someone else?
retelling and retelling and retelling
the same poem body in new line breaks--
read what you will-- I don't mind
being a library-- there is
no find for leaving me outside
in the rain-- I want word
wrinkle-- I want bleeded ink--
I want someone to read without
intention and make a new poem
of whatever words you find on my
skin today when I strip for you
next to my bookshelf-- this is
peeling off each others call numbers 
and finding all the words we've saved beneath.
I won't catalog you but I will
steal your rhyme scheme if you're not
careful-- I told you I'm a language 
thief-- I don't want to own
you but I want to write down
the words that make up your body
in this instant-- never mind the scars--
everyone has been wronged at least
once by a thesaurus--