a poem... manifesto: the body

[bonairpoet]

manifesto: the body

Even the pinched nerves sing

some knowledge back to my brain.

I love those tweaks, the back

calling out to the jail warden

thighs.  When I don’t work

them enough, the legs become

stubborn mules, shuffling, even

more prima donna than the bastard

heart.  Here’s the first rule: when

the hand comes close to the body,

touch.  Nothing divines more truths

than the fingertips, the million million

nerve endings there.  I love the muscles

in my back; their undulate tide moving

to the moon of a woman’s hand. Even

the veins thick and varicose along the instep

speak to my great great grandfather’s sugar

cane swings, to my father’s always leaving.

I was a man before my body revealed

what it truly believed; that no other

was swifter, that death was impossible

if the face could so impassively accept

the hurled fist, if the cracked rib

would still wheeze the bloody lung

onward. This body is mine - this warlock’s

bag of dirty tricks, this auction block

offering itself to its own throat’s

bidding, this sacrificial altar, dervish

hip seeking the planet’s infinite

down beat, syncopating
always on the break.