Bang Bang Bang

[greenstorm]

Barefoot

Loving me with my shoes off
means loving my long brown legs,
sweet dears, as good as spoons;
and my feet, those two children
let out to play naked. Intricate nubs,
my toes. No longer bound.
And what’s more, see toenails and
prehensile joints of joints and
all ten stages root by root.
All spirited and wild, this little
piggy went to market and this little piggy
stayed. Long brown legs and long brown toes.
Further up, my darling, the woman
is calling her secrets, little houses,
little tongues that tell you.

There is no one else but us
in this house on the land spit.
The sea wears a bell in its navel.
And I’m your barefoot wench for a
whole week. Do you care for salami?
No. You’d rather not have a scotch?
No. You don’t really drink. You do
drink me. The gulls kill fish,
crying out like three-year-olds.
The surf’s a narcotic, calling out,
I am, I am, I am
all night long. Barefoot,
I drum up and down your back.
In the morning I run from door to door
of the cabin playing chase me.
Now you grab me by the ankles.
Now you work your way up the legs
and come to pierce me at my hunger mark.

–Anne Sexton

Whatever your name, Shiva, Vishnu,
the genius who inspired Scherazade,
savior of the Jains, the pure Buddha,
lotus-born God, I am sick. The world
is my disease, and You are the cure,
You, you, you, you, you, you, you.

from Naked Song, Lalla, translated by Coleman Barks

The Place We Don't Name

The place we don’t name has become the default,
which is backwards.
I say
I want to fuck your mouth, or
I want to fuck your ass,
or
if that isn’t where I want slide in, I say
I want to fuck you -
making you the place where your biology defies your identity,
where your biology denies your identity
an idea so far from right that wrong doesn’t even seem to cover it.
The you of you is your brain, your heart,
but I can’t lick your frontal lobe,
can’t choke myself on your brain stem until I get it all the way down my throat,
can’t suck your cerebral cortex until it engorges, then explodes.
The you of you is your brain, your heart,
but I can't sink my seeking cock into the chambers of your heart;
coax your veins slowly down over my fist;
stroke your xyphoid process until it tingles.
Instead.
Instead I touch the furrow of your body with my hands
and the furrow of your brain with my words at the same time,
in the same way,
pushing my message into the wetness – roughly, intuitively, precisely,
wanting to integrate the experiences,
using all my skill to make you crave their penetration over and over,
fucking you,
holding you,
whispering to you,
naming you
and hoping that the language we’ve left behind can hitch a ride
to where we’ve ended up.

S. Bear Bergman

Comments

[dunfalach.livejournal.com]

> Whatever your name, Shiva, Vishnu,
> the genius who inspired Scherazade,
> savior of the Jains, the pure Buddha,
> lotus-born God, I am sick. The world
> is my disease, and You are the cure,
> You, you, you, you, you, you, you.

That seems an awfully big request, this cure, to ask of someone whose name they don't even know. A sort of panhandler, asking strangers for something we don't know if they'll give, and fear they may not care. It reminds me of Paul speaking to the Athenians, I think it was, about their altar to "the unknown god".