From This Body
part one
only the other day
(when I was hard and shiny
like water a long way down)
I was the knot, untied
and made useless
I was my own breath;
I spoke with the knowledge
sown in blood
(reaped, later, with fire)
and like water a long way down,
I am yielding only at my surface.
there is a yearning;
denied, the silence fills
my caves, my inner secret hollows,
the place where rivers join monuments.
the yearning sown in breath and blood
the demand, as always, for loyalty
unending, for breath as eternal as waves.
part two
if I fall into this, the rhythm
will take me, the kisses will distract
me, the tension will hum
along my spine and collect in an
electric ball, crackling between
my legs. Shining from me
and back into me, the warmth
spreads like liquid
trickling from me. Even in this
bliss, the call sounds. My mouth,
restless, suckles what is brought near.
I yield yet again.
I imagine the body of her calling, electric
with that same beauty. I swallow.
part three
I'm six again, waking cold and coughing
through this raw meat that resembles
my throat. We are full of clever pouches
like lungs and pores and vagina—tonight
I am body wrapped achingly around fluid and phlegm,
thick tongue and lips made of dried mud
tonight I can understand why we are said
to come from dust. Just add water.
No light.
Even the space between synapses is
too difficult to bridge, the void crackling
uselessly. My skin is strange to my touch,
my legs old and slow, my hands feel borrowed.
Even my heat is not my own.
I thought I'd carry
my shoulders gracefully,
no matter what, this flesh
was mine. But thoughts change,
and I live in a body with ideas of its own.
part four
coming back to the world, I arise
and feel my own skin shudder, the
small hairs radar to the presence
of another small ghost. It flows
near my mouth and down my body,
vengeful only in rememberance and
regretful only in the passing of days
when it was possible. Flushed with the memory,
I kiss my own hand with a kind of abandonment.
Heavy with wanting,
I roll to the door
merely wetness with
skin around it. Would
I flow away, should
I open my mouth?
Every bone, dross. All water
is one water and all arousal one
long, slow motion from the beginnings
of want to our twilight. My skin
knows this and in that wisdom
remembers me to darkness, to the red heat.