whether we are
or are not or simply are trying
to be-- to be let go of--
there remains a need
for ballast, for censure,
for someone else's hands.
when the heart of me
goes skimming over treetops,
chasing moons, wildly,
i forget.
to need you.
when i am home again,
tired, regretful, spent,
errant child that my heart is
i will neglect to remember
that i ought to have brought you
and instead go keening
to our bed, and your body.

love song for activism

usually we come individually,
slowly, after a great moment of wrongness,
resulting in a desire to do right.
we arrive at the progressivist conclusion,
deciding to eke change out of stagnance
and learning that the process
measures us, hazes us, finds us unsuitable
and dumps us into the fire of self-pronounced failure.
branded, we remove ourselves
and, sticky with the filth of healing,
dive into the fray, feeling everything, fixing nothing.
living in this way
is more dangerous, more daring
than dying, than being a martyr;
but i will see the victory, when i am done.
i will see something amorphous earn its substance;
i will see the skin of others
sloughed off, with mine, shedded
like some great social purge.
i will see change, and i will have healing.

the voice provides its own resonance,

but receiving ears must choose to hear it.

gaze, however, is not auditory,

is not as heavy in its existence, as insistent

in its execution. gaze cannot be witnessed,

and sidles by, quick as blinking,

a quiet hiss against passing skin.

the words can be ignored, or can be heard,

can be reacted to or shrugged away;

but the watcher's eyes, the sweep 

of visual presence is almost more tangible--

almost. held culpable for every investigative eye

i find myself unworthy, judge myself guilty,

so that when the viewer gives a verdict

i am ready for the sentencing.

tied up in gestational knots, keening
and climbing and crying for smoother pathways,
redefining what it is to be tangled:
i am all the words synonymous with desire,
remembering what it was to be loved by you.

what a dark mote against the clear background,
if it sank i would never tell anyone:
i, who cannot even act but only watch,
never exerting force or energy or giving any of myself away,
find myself increasingly lost.
another day might have seen me broken; but
you taught me facade, and the lesson does not fade.

i can't, i can't make the world go, these sudden stops and falls,
giant intakes of celestial breath
and all the lower orders have to pause, and wait.
i can't make the sea rise, or stars fall, or clouds churn,
though armageddon seems surer than surity, purer than poverty.
white on white pavement, cheap grout climbing the space between the concrete,
and what can two soft hands do?
oh, the mind might be willing, but the body is untrained,
unusable, distrustful, reluctant.
where maybe once smooth skin sluiced over quiet joints and tapered features,
now i am hobbled by anxiety, so thick it marks my skin,
emotional chlamydia, purple pock marks as telling as my ego.
when the fire starts, remind me that concrete doesn't burn,
no matter its condition.

viewing

it's late enough to feel alone,
the bedroom one populated island
 in the great sea of the darkened earth.
i'm watching her chest rise and fall,
her rhythmic breathing and the smoothness of it.
and how her fingertips scrabble at the bedsheets
(just curling, two fingers, three,
till the whole fist spasms, clutches, grasps)
that intimates the habits of her body.
the whole act is a code, a pulsing message
waiting to be translated from sounds and pauses
into the fitful expressions of her affection for me.
the inhale that starts a new thought,
the knees flexing then the fingers
and the toes curling and the biting of the lips and
the ascension of the timbre of her breath,
her eyelashes and syncopated respiration
beating out a message that needs no translation
for someone who knows her intimately, her impetus,
her abilities, the way she can lie
with her whole body at once.