Power Politics (2 page)

After the agony in the guest
bedroom, you lying by the
overturned bed
your face uplifted, neck propped
against the windowsill, my arm
under you, cold moon
shining down through the window

wine mist rising
around you, an almost-
visible halo

You say, Do you
love me, do you love me

I answer you:
I stretch your arms out
one to either side,
your head slumps forward.

Later I take you home
in a taxi, and you
are sick in the bathtub.

My beautiful wooden leader
with your heartful of medals
made of wood, fixing it
each time so you almost win,

you long to be bandaged
before you have been cut.
My love for you is the love
of one statue for another: tensed

and static. General, you enlist
my body in your heroic
struggle to become real:
though you promise bronze rescues

you hold me by the left ankle
so that my head brushes the ground,
my eyes are blinded,
my hair fills with white ribbons.

There are hordes of me now, alike
and paralyzed, we follow you
scattering floral tributes
under your hooves.

Magnificent on your wooden horse
you point with your fringed hand;
the sun sets, and the people all
ride off in the other direction.

He is a strange biological phenomenon

Like eggs and snails you have a shell

You are widespread
and bad for the garden,
hard to eradicate

Scavenger, you feed
only on dead meat:

Your flesh by now
is pure protein,
smooth as gelatin
or the slick bellies of leeches

You are sinuous and without bones
Your tongue leaves tiny scars
the ashy texture of mildewed flowers

You thrive on smoke; you have
no chlorophyll; you move
from place to place like a disease

Like mushrooms you live in closets
and come out only at night.

You want to go back
to where the sky was inside us

animals ran through us, our hands
blessed and killed according to our
wisdom, death
made real blood come out

But face it, we have been
improved, our heads float
several inches above our necks
moored to us by
rubber tubes and filled with
clever bubbles,

               our bodies
are populated with billions
of soft pink numbers
multiplying and analyzing
themselves, perfecting
their own demands, no trouble to anyone.

I love you by
sections and when you work.

Do you want to be illiterate?
This is the way it is, get used to it.

Their attitudes differ

1

To understand
each other: anything
but that, & to avoid it

I will suspend my search for
germs if you will keep
your fingers off the microfilm
hidden inside my skin

2

I approach this love
like a biologist
pulling on my rubber
gloves & white labcoat

You flee from it
like an escaped political
prisoner, and no wonder

3

You held out your hand
I took your fingerprints

You asked for love
I gave you only descriptions

Please die I said
so I can write about it

They travel by air

A different room, this month
a worse one, where your
body with head
attached and my head with
body attached coincide briefly

I want questions and you want
only answers, but the building
is warming up, there is not much

time and time is not
fast enough for us any
more, the building sweeps
away, we are off course, we
separate, we hurtle towards each other
at the speed of sound, everything roars

we collide sightlessly and
fall, the pieces of us
mixed as disaster
and hit the pavement of this room
in a blur of silver fragments

not the shore but an aquarium
filled with exhausted water and warm
seaweed

          glass clouded
with dust and algae

                      tray
with the remains of dinner

smells of salt carcasses and uneaten shells

sunheat comes from wall
grating              no breeze

you sprawl across
                              the bed like a marooned

starfish

          you are sand-

coloured

     on my back

your hand floats belly up

You have made your escape,
your known addresses
crumple in the wind, the city
unfreezes with relief

traffic shifts back
to its routines, the swollen
buildings return to

normal, I walk believably
from house to store, nothing

remembers you but the bruises
on my thighs and the inside of my skull.

Because you are never here
but always there, I forget
not you but what you look like

You drift down the street
in the rain, your face
dissolving, changing shape, the colours
running together

My walls absorb
you, breathe you forth
again, you resume
yourself, I do not recognize you

You rest on the bed
watching me watching
you, we will never know
each other any better

than we do now

Imperialist, keep off
the trees I said.

No use: you walk backwards,
admiring your own footprints.