dust worship

i grind my teeth into sandbox. 
all the children bury themselves
& become plastic dinosaurs.
poetry is magick because it also
is always about transformation.
no one walks into a day & doesn't leave
on their reptile hands & knees 
praying to the shoe gravel.
once i spent a year living in someone's ear.
or was it their tongue? the two
can become the same & then you are
screaming, "fuck you" in an empty house.
sometimes a word would arrive
& i would have to kill it with
the fly swatter so none of us 
turned into a plastic bag.
please don't try to tell me
that you love me. i don't want
to be loved in this poem. i want 
to go outside & let a mosquito bite me.
watch my arm swell like there's
a pearl underneath the flesh.
then, work all week to release that pearl.
everything precious is prone to escape.
i build a shrine to dust. the wind comes
& takes the dust away. i start
inventing evil contraptions
that might prevent a future exodus 
but then i remember living on a tongue.
how it could be a dove or a snake
or a slide whistle depending on the day.
you cannot cage each grain.
the dust will do what it does.
it will leave & it will return to the floors
of the house. i lay on the hardwood.
put my ear to the dirt. i hear
it singing. a throat full of beads & pearls.
my blood is a shoe kicked on 
the side of the stair to get the mud off.
when you closed your lips
i used to see a moon on the ceiling
of your mouth. i thought
i could build a ladder of dust.
reach up & touch it. i imagined 
it as the texture of a honeydew
i never reached it though.