Susceptibility

Each morning I perform
ritualistic expansions of the mandible,
so my mouth is sufficiently
prepared to marvel
upon meeting an evocative phrase.
I let my face make strange shapes,
which mimic the moods you portray.
My eyebrows raise often and easily,
I refuse to be afraid to swoon.

It's my susceptibility
 it always seems to get to me
 I’m malleable to everything.

I sit on the bus and
encourage my center to soften,
allow the turns to tousle me,
just so that I know
I’m still able to be moved. 
My skin cells shed into the alleyway
that separates our revered dive-bar
from less enchanted facets of the world,
with every swallow I ingest
microparticles of poets past
who’ve loitered here before me,
smoking, rambling, reeling.
I’m grateful that their ghosts 
inform my imagination
and my immune system.
I’m often craving conversation
but do not want company.
Friends pass prompts back and forth
eager for each other’s
external information
to spike our stimulation.
at this point, I must be an accumulation 
of acquaintances, ancestors, 
lyrics, lattes, and chapbooks.

It's my sensitivity
it always gets the best of me
I’m permeable to anything.

I’m certain that the temperature of the air
alters the pace with which I speak.
I download and update 
my affections and inflections constantly.
That which you witness 
can not be unseen.
I have been many things,
some have felt sweet.

At times I’ve thought
I braved the page alone, 
but innumerable influences
hum within the blur.
Voices of my Nona and O’Hara
swim synchronized
at the psychedelic pool-party in my brain. 
I smoke the Eucalyptus leaves
that fall before my feet
Welcome San Francisco!
into my bloodstream.

If you’re willing to grow
a lead-pipe in your spine
strain to be straight and fixate
on disillusioned pixels for 8 hours a day,
but are comfortable resisting
the impulse to thrash 
to the rainstorm of a drum-beat,
it’s high time to recalibrate 
your susceptibility.