Song
SONG
I catch my breath when I step
softly between puddles reflecting
rainbow clouds and micro-organisms you
could mistake for dirt and might just trample
these delicate acts of life. Kill them
if you’re not careful and do not
respect their infinite geometry and intricate
cluster of structures within structures
so deep and black. So meticulously
purposeful in their reproduction. In your
mindless dismissal you could wipe
out this tiny patch of brown
that takes hundreds of years
to grow. You reject its very form
as unnecessarily cluttered and not
elegant, classy, or categorical in the way
man-systems categorize things he cannot
himself achieve. One big boot
placed in the center could kill
the miraculous biology of this
nameless cluster. This organic
life misunderstood as a mess
as it spreads form upon form upon
form in its simple sane
insanity. The act
of reproduction. Me. I am
careful when I enter. My cheeks rose
red with heat and expended
effort to not misstep. I move like wind
in this place of evacuation. Civilization lost
and crumbling in piles of stone
walls falling. My blood
pulses. Iridescent. My body
a patchwork of colors and patterns.
Unnameable and mismatched. Did you ever think
I live this way because I reject
containment.? My plaids and florals.
My skulls and Madonnas. My purples
and oranges. My refusal to make it simple
because I am of nature. I am of plants
rocks sky mountains rivers. Miracles
blooming colors you could never hope
to reproduce and you should be
grateful for witnessing. I tiptoe
through ruins. The place where children
once ran wild through the canyon
floor and women bore
baskets on their heads and backs.
Sweat streams as they climbed steep
steps carved into mountainsides. The women
themselves mountains of endurance. You
will not know their story nor will you
know mine. Though you try
to put me in a box defined by history.
Adorn me in a lack
of adornment. But I am
a rainbow rock. Shimmering pool. Woman
who steps with caution. I wear my
tattooed skin with pride and spin
my breath into colors
unknown as I whisper my heart
into words never muttered. My tongue
sputters with the clank of my ribs
keeping time with history as if it is
a song that needs to be sung.
And it does. And I do
sing it with full throated full throttle
intensity. Just like when I was
a kid and the other kids laughed
at me for raising
my voice in unabashed
song, and the kids laughed
at me for wearing every color I could
find in the Sears Roebuck catalog.
And the kids laughed
at the black rings under
my eyes and bruises
on my thighs under
my persimmon red
miniskirt. And I am still
singing. I’m still spinning
rainbows out of ether. Turning
disgrace into love on the thread
of a song. I feel the women
who climbed these rocks. I wrap
their voices around me. A blanket
woven from ghosts. Ghosts
trickling pools of light slipping
through the star-studded sheet
of night. They never mis-step on
the mud-colored organisms. These
women who join me and we become
a macro-organism. Sing colors
so bright they hurt when you
refuse to let them in but are
so beautiful they can turn your
life around when you open
your mouth and sing with us.