I leave, I come
Every time I leave
I think of perpetual motion:
Music that sounds like running
and never needing breath.
I think of hair streaming back
into the blurred past.
I think of tense, agile muscles
exploding with speed.
I think of sprouting wings and careening
into the nothingness of light and air.
Every time I come
I think of slowed and soundless time:
Eyes and hands touching
like a thousand mouths could never speak.
I think of dragging you to the ground
and violating you.
I think of my clay dirty hands
soiling the sacred vessel you’ve made for yourself.
I think of the last…
exhalation.
It’s the during that I can’t think at all.
I can’t find a way to stop
the incessant pleasantries and book talks long enough
to catch your face in mine
and tell you things you’ll never read
and surely never hear from me,
not even in poetry.
I can’t shorten the distance
between personal space
and private squirming
to pull you in and invade you
and all the walled cities we’ve built,
all the gates already bared,
and the windows deaf to pebbles,
so high, so far away
you’d need a catapult.
Most times I don’t even know
who’s locked in the balcony and who’s scaling the garden fence.
I cannot dance this gender role
no more than I can lead,
no more than I can follow.
I just rise and fall,
rise and fall
the chest, the breath, the ultimate test
in this unyielding pendulum
of cyclic parameters:
I leave
I come
Every time a moment closer
to shortening the distance,
closing the gap,
and reversing the role:
I come
I leave
We come
No one leaves.
-KEA
1-10-00
I think of perpetual motion:
Music that sounds like running
and never needing breath.
I think of hair streaming back
into the blurred past.
I think of tense, agile muscles
exploding with speed.
I think of sprouting wings and careening
into the nothingness of light and air.
Every time I come
I think of slowed and soundless time:
Eyes and hands touching
like a thousand mouths could never speak.
I think of dragging you to the ground
and violating you.
I think of my clay dirty hands
soiling the sacred vessel you’ve made for yourself.
I think of the last…
exhalation.
It’s the during that I can’t think at all.
I can’t find a way to stop
the incessant pleasantries and book talks long enough
to catch your face in mine
and tell you things you’ll never read
and surely never hear from me,
not even in poetry.
I can’t shorten the distance
between personal space
and private squirming
to pull you in and invade you
and all the walled cities we’ve built,
all the gates already bared,
and the windows deaf to pebbles,
so high, so far away
you’d need a catapult.
Most times I don’t even know
who’s locked in the balcony and who’s scaling the garden fence.
I cannot dance this gender role
no more than I can lead,
no more than I can follow.
I just rise and fall,
rise and fall
the chest, the breath, the ultimate test
in this unyielding pendulum
of cyclic parameters:
I leave
I come
Every time a moment closer
to shortening the distance,
closing the gap,
and reversing the role:
I come
I leave
We come
No one leaves.
-KEA
1-10-00