Strengthen

Strengthen

Ways to defend oneself, ideas, beliefs, essence without over-riding the accuser. Instead of fleeing into fissures, withdrawing into a shell, masking with silence, remaining while rushing away, the wave rose, high, surging in sunlight, milky green underside, proud, and defended.

Sighting

Those on the beach throwing rocks and sharp shell bits and driftwood at the strange fish flopping out of the water, stopping, acknowledging, backing off.

Untouched, not harmed.

Having met, and met the fear of difference, like two obverse cultures reckoning with each other. One half-submerged, gasping water and air, the other, only air-sucking.

On the shore, where they met. Waves tore the air.

No-one was hurt; the shouting group withdrew from the edge.

The flopping into the coiling wave as it drew back.

A miracle; they called it a miracle sighting,
that day.

Stare

Eyes that stare. Impassive, in the rocking cars of the underground subways, brown or blue, tiny, beady, at young women. Seated, watching. Unwavering, bleak.

Her glistening, manicured curls, gym-toned lithe body, tight jeans or skirts, tiny butt-geared jackets, dusted with golden glow.

Energetic, ambitious, sweet. Cadences of voices on phones when the cars break out of the earth and glide on metal tracks under the vast sky.

Old, heavy, arthritic, hair like grey wire. If one could suck beauty in through such fixed, harsh eyes. Beauty would be siphoned out of that diaphanous thing sitting so lightly on the seat, oblivious. But events will mark her too, face of powdered crevices, make-up collecting in the networks of wrinkles, the soft sagging skin. Time, the last revenge.

I want to place mirrors before those who stare. I think it is the dreadful reality of those who are no longer. I try to understand why the generations do this to each other. Cold, impassive, unsmiling stare.

Jealousy.

Bitterness, it’s terrible face.

Undo it! Take off the masque! Dear Mother! I beseech!

Chains

I don’t know why she stalks the seawall, stopping, staring at the unmoving horizon. Perhaps she is waiting, remembering. Her furious, angry eyes, forlorn. Was her heart broken, and then re-broken before it mended?

Her arms of black lace, her black brocade skirt, she dresses as if from another century, the red silk scarf at her neck like a flag of conquest, of the surrendered, broken heart.

She paces; she stops.

Sometimes she screeches. Gulls land on her shoulders. Sand flies in her black, wind-streamed hair. Earrings the colour of ripe cherries dangle from her earlobes. Spray wets her tear-swollen face.

If you talk to her, she will stare blankly, or scream at you.

Attack, belittle, accuse.

It is best to let her pace. The white cuffs of waves chain enough.

Unpossessed

I have no reason not to believe you, Monsieur. You, who are cosmopolitan, a superb lover.

Fresh oranges in the Agean Sea;
Hot Springs in Banff; or Ikaria, Greece;
Paris for art, or New York,
and women.

Monsieur, we could explore the erotique, except you are not here. Words dance in the air. Across the space of tables, phones, pages or screens. The ceaseless flow of loving language caressing, licking me with tongues of fire, yet without touching. Sometimes I understand you prefer the intimacy of distance.

You are far away, listening.

Nobody can have me; I cannot have anybody. It is a reality, mon amor.

Eclipse

Dance of the fragmented body. Dance intimately with the soles of your feet, or your ankles, or the ripped cartilage of your knees. Follow your elbows around the room, these points of bone strongest. Dance with the hormones of your endocrine system, the muscles of your gluteus maximus, or your biceps, or your inner ear. Heal your sexuality while you gyrate your hips. Dance your smile, or the nails on your fingers and toes. Writhe around your belly button. Or face the music and dance as if your body is on fire and you are disappearing into spirit. Dance like the Gods are watching you; or they are inside dissembling you. Dance an orgasm full and deep. Eclipse into yourself, rhythm of wholeness for a fragmentary moment.

Then breathe in twelve perfect breaths: circulatory, digestive, endocrine, immune, integumentary, lymphatic, muscular, nervous, reproductive, respiratory, skeletal, urinary. Twelve systems of the body, like the twelve hours in the days that follow nights that rhythm your circadian, or the twelve months that form one year of living.

Then lie down.