This piece continues to evolve - expanding and contracting in and out of itself. I have at least 5 versions now!
Song and roll,
how I love the blinding rush
of that waterfall
when it gulps
all attempts of the brave morning
to rise,
until there is none left
but the heap of my body
in rain.
The unseasonable storm,
in the long limbs
of my June days,
newly bred, double-jointed,
curling over me
like sex,
I cup the conch shell
over my ears,
the cool musty whisper
echoing,
the tongue of your strange
inhabitant.
Mint moist, dull-thud,
the land of every hit,
careening my skin
like pavement,
eroding some shear
of me you slide right down,
always down
for the storm water drain,
until I am sodden,
creased in rain,
my brown strands shredding
across my flushed cheeks,
my blue eyes
filling up like music.
And then I am glittering,
I am all breathless bent
and angled,
I am cold sweat
and misty-minded,
I am aging in the act,
I have gained weight
and I sag with rain,
my shirt hangs off me like wings,
I am a flightless bird
in the rain,
suddenly flying down the street
howling to the rain,
the bombing of my foot-fall
chewing up the sidewalk,
the pools popping in rapid
succession.
I have let myself believe
I could escape,
I did not let myself think
that perhaps I did not want to,
that my body by the searing glow
of the electric stove
boils for the shatter
of the rain,
that I do not hear machine guns,
but rather the skitter
of your relentless purring
against my windows,
my body longs
to the ever-flowing trees
of you –
all your arms
and hands
and legs
and mouths.
