Second workshop

This was the second piece of mine we workshopped, a few weeks ago. I'm getting workshopped next week again and have an idea about diagramming a sentence, but I don't know how it could possibly be read out loud, so that will have to wait.
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Please Place Refuse in Proper Receptacle

I.
The vice grip
on my chest
says everybody knows
I'm not worth it
and everybody knows
I wasted the paper and ink,
abused the delicate balance
of electromagnetic waves criss-crossing
and cross-hatching to uphold the air
that I can't breath.
Because of the vice grip.
Remember?
The pain in my chest,
the pressure on my throat.
Do you remember?

II.
I learned the knock-on effect from Patrick: whether
you want to or not, you do unto others. So I grip
whatever I can get my hands around when there
is that grip on me. I learned it from Patrick. Patrick
who taught me how to ground him when I'd find him
wandering on Main and South Henry,
wrestling with
conversing with
the Spanish granite angels
that became graceful flesh when his frontal lobe
blazed orange, when his hands burned red
from the January night's cold, because Patrick
didn't need gloves, didn't need a coat.
Patrick was in Valencia.
In April.
Before the war. Before Franco.

Ask him.

His hands, Spanish roses. Wet and wilting.
Temporary and useless. Until we'd give them use.
Until we'd sit in the middle of the sidewalk
our palms flat to the concrete, trying to get ourselves back home.
Our hands on the concrete, trying to get us back here: Patrick
out of Valencia at the turn of the century; me, out of the space
between my skin and sternum, the space I can't scratch
out of, I have tried when I forget Patrick and I forget
to put my hands to something hard.

III.
I am not on the sidewalk, testing time or space.
I am inside.
I am right here,
inside.
I think of Patrick.
I do not tear through the thin layers covering my chest,
do not stripe red the skin. I remember
and grasp the table,
breaking two fingernails and getting someone's
not wet but still pliable gum underneath another,
someone who was probably a boy, someone
who had extracted all the wintergreen there was
from the chicle, who made it useless and I want
to do unto him.
I want
to know
the inside
of his mouth.
I want
to discipline
the fingers
that aided
the immediate disposal,
the immediate destruction.
I want
to cough
and cough up
a paste from this pain,
knead it into the rubber
under the desk, beneath
my nails. Place it between
his two left molars. Tell
him to chew.

Chew.