Moving and thinking: how to get there

I see people who need help
and want to ignore them.
Offer help through a plain face,
the back of my head.
"Hey, I need some advice."
I want you to say this looking at the carpet
counting loose strands. Your voice
is the embodiment of the beginning of life.
Microscopic people eschewing
from adding body parts they won't need
for centuries. Change happening inside their bodies,
no one saying anything until their changes spill
from mouths like flooding rivers
doling out their waters in a field
that nourishes simply because
they have nowhere else to go.

"Why don't we make some pizza bites
and watch ESPN. I want the Lakers to win."
We'll watch tall men move
in long strides, flashes of yellow.
Yelling and screaming and people
exerting everything in their bodies
until they're just human-shaped
duffle bags carrying the things that move us.

Their insides are screaming
about a sore throat,
an abusive husband whose hand
moves slow like continents.
A lumbering gate,
tobacco can ring on his pocket.
I can look at your hands folded on your lap,
the way your shoulders dig into the couch
and know that you feel someone beating someone else
is wrong. You're wanting me to drop my head onto your shoulder
and tell you, "Nobody deserves that," over and over again.

The truth is, I look at beatings
as energy moving from mass to mass,
not a fragmented conversation,
a misunderstanding, a broken home,
or a trip to a vacant field where people
scream and shove until they're too tired to
exist. Naked trees will bend towards the sedan
like parents leaning over to kiss their child's head.
Birds are grooming themselves in the dark
and the wind will move fast enough to make
eyes tear but you still can't hear it.
It's just something that needs to happen,
unless you can think of another way
to release everything at once.

Other times,
I want to invite them over to my house.
We can sit in my room on the floor.
Shuffle decks of cards
and play three games of solitaire at once.
Hey, how about mentioning suicide?
Lean back against the wall
and paint it with what makes you think.