Why go into that dark-walled room
where mind, holding
a crystal scepter,
insists on its authority-
what portion of the self
could it satisfy? Surely not
the brain, that lover
of sensation, organ
whose chords are made to swell
by the sweet confluence
of salt and sun, of ache
and thrust.
Think of goosebumps on the skin
when the heart’s weather changes,
when a clash of systems
funnels the past
to new configurations-trees
upside down, so that mazes
of roots become exotic bouquets
and roofs fly, rearranging dreams.
We want to see those chairs
and beds upended, in different
rooms, want that wind singing
in our ears, want flesh
lifted into air by the magnetic
force of other flesh.
We know how the parts of the body
deceive themselves,
we need not rehearse
what masquerades as love.
Let us not humor, either,
the notion of ideas
floating in their own
no-trespassing pool:
let’s turn the heat off,
wait for the sun to go down.
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