overheard

i can’t help it.
my ability to overhear
and then to recombine what i’ve heard
into something else is at once a curse
and a mechanical puzzle.

my ear and mind
just bend to the task
not quite at hand.
i hear what i hear and make of it
what there is to be made.

take the case of a man i know
with a flame tattoo on his head
who lives, apparently, on his friends’ couches. take the way
he comes to me for a cigarette. when I ask how he is feeling
he tells me that he is unspeakably angry.

he walks over to the curb
in front of the corner store, sits down, and talks.
you must believe me when i say
i am not trying to hear him speaking to —
who? not me. someone inside, perhaps to himself, who knows.

but i hear him anyway. he tells that listener
that he hasn’t had sex in years.
he tells that listener,
you can’t play god with me because i’m already dead.
they broke in and stole my balls.

a few days later in a foreign airport
i hear a woman on the phone
telling the listener that she IS a woman
and he IS a man goddamn it
and she is sick of it not being clear.

i am certain that somehow i have found
the source of the voice in flame guy’s head. if i had never
overheard the first conversation i would not know
how to interpret this second one but
it rings true: the man is impotent, on fire,

unspeakably angry, especially at them, but at least he can speak to her.
she is tired of how unclear he has become, and sick of trying
to make him clear from her side of the border. all the while,
some crazy man is listening to them both
and stealing from them for his own needs.

yes. i am the thief they know is there but never see.
i steal from them and everyone, conspirator,
poisoned ears openly looting even as i wonder
how much of what is beyond them is really mine.
is anything i say anything more than what i’ve overheard?

i won’t answer that, but you can whisper your own opinion
on the matter if you want. i’ll know in a second
what you think of me, what i should think of me. and if two of you
should disagree, i’ll take that argument too and make it my own.
you wonder why i eavesdrop. i wonder why you think of me at all.