So here’s the thing:
I see
the shape of you
And it looks soft
like a shimmy
or a small lap dog
or a panther, dancing
I think these things
like lightning
fast
unwise
and splitting
But unfortunate
like a band you never knew
Surprised by this
I am stalled
Stalked in a corner
Like a coroner
without chemicals and too many
bodies lining metal coffins
And here’s the thing:
“when your finding yourself
in uncertain moments
the decisions you make are incidental
Coerced through good faith”
Here I am
thinking
You Be Soft
and luxurious;
Smacked and spattered
like a painting
I think
I am not unto myself
in these right and one way
wound, walled minds
Listening to the babble and clatter
of my friends
who say
“Jesus
would look at boobies”
and
I agree
The imperfections of people
are what make them
perfect
and perfect is
the limitation of your skin,
the slight flaw in your anything or everything
The imperfection of Jesus would have been
Mary Magdalene,
not whoring or washing feet or trembling
but strong, questioning, and stalwart at the side
of this man we’ve all memorialized as sexless;
perfect, inhuman, only God-sided
Mary Magdalene
Are you here?
Tonight?
Crying for our lost Lourdes parts
our lost truths and imperfections,
now striving, starving
for precise, faultless, flawless form?
Are we owning any part
of truth
now sacrificed
and subjugated?
Who knows if you are real-
or if these feelings
like an alphabet strung together
out of order on a keyboard
or striped up a barber shop pole
lead me to conclusions
a labyrinth
me towards nowhere
We all say
stop it
at some point.
We all say
no more.
We all say
I’m not there, I’m not that
I’m not ready.
Here I am.
Looking for softness.
But hard has
Its own solution
like a potion
Conjured
by those come
to take me home.
I’m not sensible.
I’m not making sense.
But I don’t have to.
Here’s my toll,
here in chains
Unruptured
Volcanoed…
I’m almost done.
And you’re the punchline.
08/14/2004-08/17/2004