53: Language

1.

I cannot blame; my aggression

is my own.

Picture: where my youth has starved his

skin lies like a sheet over rocks. The sacrum

protrudes

like a baby elephant's head. A cross: triangle

of tented flesh. When I bathe him,

the clavicle

holds water at his neck. Arms, like rope, I pray

he uses them: might his mind grapple heavens; might

his braided arms raise him up. If you

have seen his picture,

my starving child -

any

starving

youth

and you have not been moved

to weep, you are to weak

to be a soldier of God's gentle hands. Cry for these things. And

do not sing

to me of malnutrition; speak

to me of food; when you are full and thirsty

find the picture

and be baptized.

2.

She makes me feel hurt, this mother.

She made me do this. He has created me this way.

That makes me sad.

Listen how you give your power away. Nothing

ever, will make you. Everything begins

within.

I feel hurt from this. I did this. I am created. I am sorrow. You

are born within: own your feeling. Cross the desert within,

flee to the wilderness within. It will

take you forty days - but this yoke is easy. Find

the picture of a starving

child, see me dying. Make yourself right. Feed me

love

until I burst. I want

you to feel this wash over you; I want you

to feel how we break; see how much

of pain is the burning picture of soul,

melting frames; of tearing: the soft hilted collapse of his muscle,

the edged breath of his lungs,

come home to

the sheath of

my heart.

3.

In my village

there

was

a great tree. Slowly the right

trunk took to shrinking: leathered

like an old hand. Leaves fell crisp and golden, green too. The left

trunk

went shortly; after the

counterpoint

- it wept. This great being

relinquished sugared sap, began

to lay itself

open and down, found repose

and

erupted as

the air pinched finger

and thumb, pressure and snap; How

magnificent

to be living to see the life in dying. My son,

so calm;

my daughter, so new,

patiently withers

like an ancient tree. My leaf, so long there, then not. I give

my sugared sap, find repose.

Our great being expresses

the moment of life and death in profound harmonies.

4.

At the school dance

those sideline legs will snap

their fingers to a song as though

born without ears; some will dance organically, heaven sent,

they should not

be so rare;

we are meant as quiet audience

simply to serve,

feel life's dictatorial vibration until

we bathe and drip in its hum

and the voice no longer whispers; it

breaks us in two with a word, scattering

us into trails of evaporated wars.