Thursday, April 28, 2005

Un-Sexual, Un-Healing

Oh, That I Were a Dog
( Where I are Plural )
.
It has always seemed unsustainable,
this lying side by side,
this sliding in and out daily,
hourly,
like teaching or selling,
acting is less of a performance art
--the stage floor subsumes,
is less of an
"other."
I have never been able to make due
beneath the weight of sheets,
the confinement of thighs,
the heavy allure of breasts,
breasts of varying size and tenor,
beautiful, yes, but
the gravity of being a man,
the multitude of beds,
open thighs,
fingers,
toes,
lips, yes, lips . . .
such cumbersome light
this losing one's self,
this becoming a tongue
writhing in the dark.
A part of me wants to make love to
every woman, every woman I have known,
or met, or that has walked a little while
in the earth, women tending gardens,
women healing the world, women
knotting a kerchief over the eyes of
Justice, but even that part of me has doubts,
reservations.
It seems too much for me, this lying here
with you, my stomach asks me what it is all
about, my nose juts forward, suggesting this
is the smell of mother or those long-legged
sisters of my father who, by nature, coddled
and enticed. I remember their limbs,
what their skin smelled like, how their hair
fell along the cheek I set against their
shoulders. Safe arms of incredible women.
You lack the ephemeral nets of those girls I
consumed at the newsagent stand.
They turned into birds and clouds, flight itself,
yes, whatever I asked them to be they became,
and I did the same for them. But, this lying here
with you is so palpable, filled with fleshy rolls
and scars and unexpected patches of hair,
every manner of imaginable alteration.
Your body makes me fear my own.
It is a body I have feared from very early times,
from centuries far removed from this bed,
your walls, the drawers that secret away your
pleasure life, and the closets of your chosen
wardrobe, your desired reds and golds.
Desire enters every choice you make, every
meal you decide to eat, leaves it mark on every
orange peel your fingers tear, every place your
bare foot touches, remains behind every time
your hand wraps around the doorknob to your
apartment, infuses every sweep your tongue
makes over your lips, fills every labored breath
you breathe as you sweat in the park, walking
vigorously, jiggling beneath your loose clothing,
wishing a man of my caliber could lie still, one
night, beneath your canopy, hold and take what
is his, give you his own desire as if nothing else
grew from the earth as it spins under the stars
that shine even as they remain invisible in the
day, the day of a thousand failed loves, the light
of self-conscious stains, of awakening, axis of
light that so diminishes the interminable appeal
of a boy let loose upon the earth, dabbled on by
well-meaning women, and by entrepeneurs who
imprint early monolithic self-doubt on every
perfect being.
Oh, that I were a dog.