When We Loosen From our Bodies, All There is, is Wind

Today I realize how much the same we are. Our sicknesses, I mean. Although showing up in different orifices with different light, they are all an inheritance from the same virus.  Our pain is one. Our breasts and our skulls lumped with tumors, our skin grading itself off like cheese. All our bones--curled little snails, those are all one pulsing pain, one violent scream.

I am going in for my MRI on Saturday, and I am resentful for this technology. This picture of my insides will turn the mystical, the glimmering unknowable into a dull-print diagnosis. And I will have nothing left to worship or fear.

It's possible I have MS. That I'll have to face a life of compromise and surrender. Constant surrender to the leeches on my nervous system telling me what I already know--I want to kill the self and exit this body. I want to become a river of sorrow and exaltation.

The truth--I won't see these results as punishment. I am already too tired for martyrdom. And, more, I know this pain will free me.  I will no longer be caught in the web of wondering which way, and I will finally eat what I am given. I will cherish the flickering joy because probably it will be less frequent and more potent. I will be less shocked by disappointment and weariness. They will become like two old friends that are always fussing over the same dramas. And I will love them for who they are and listen to their whining over coffee (as if by ritual).

Yes, this new plot will do nothing but propel me forward in my evolution. Its weathering will turn my soul smooth and hard like a river rock, and others will want to hold me in their palm and remember their own gentleness.

EAT.

what scientifically happens while eating? what heaven? I try to suggest that something else makes me happier than bowing down at the temple of my tyrannical tongue; its greedy army of buds and muscle--but I can't do it.  The creamy female of dairy, or the erotic hard-bellied scrub of sodium, or the crime scene of seared meat...

All the things I lust for can fit inside the inches of my jaw. All sins and all saintly deeds-- deep love mostly-- can manifest itself into morsels of earthly and manmade elements. Each of the bites grow into gods in the blood stream or devils in the liver

Is there anything worth doing besides the act of ingesting? What church; what worship!

From UNdoing 2013

your lovely spit
the whole-bodied zen of your mouth--
I am a child for it. A sweaty little animal mourning,
like every other human

to be the soil in your hands
to be in union with the  dirty-love of your color

the relief, the certainty of your face
is so healthy for me
it turns me over in my grave
with love that is both here & gone.

midnight mermaid

the light made her skin glow like a fish caught
in crystal netting

this was not a day gleam:
it was blue and stone and lunar

she walked on the ash colored sand
towards december sea towards the waves lined with lambs

black as obsidian or confused mind or deep hole
white as salt or old scars or burning

her purple feet crushed into the elephant beach
until she reached her dark moving church

& folded, buckled in prayer
a tulip, a midnight flame