Flight of the Radical Body

I was growing half-crazy with my fingernails chewing down

the grub-filled tares of terra firma set crouched on all fours,

begging not to be forsaken before your handlebars—

begging to be set free on these sun-baked backroads with you

into the stiff August wind we knew.

See I used to be living life in the backseat rolling up windows

and locking doors to keep the pests from buzzing

close enough to stick their grody probers in my skin—

the blank slate of this boy's ripe ass being too nutritious

for the likes of welts and pricks—

See I grew cramped and bruised when my pubescent limbs

drew me outward into space and I could no longer

sit up straight or stretch my arms and legs in there—

but my bruised knees and elbows, now cramped on the floor,

were healed the moment my premature races

threw me out the back screen door!

And that's when I felt the sun’s tease like citrus, its orange

squeezed out the pulp of my bloodshot eyes

with my knuckles like the impact of an armadillo headbutt

against the eggshell bones of my flat wrists—

those blood streaks taken out upon the brick walls

protecting me from pain—

That's when I saw my toes pruning barefoot in the grass that

soaked a sea below my sandy ankles and drew its lapse

against my limbs with the whips of a northbound breeze—

that gust had flipped my shag loose and dried my lips

long before I made it to your street—

That's when I felt the ground blazing barefoot on the asphalt,

those spikes in the gravel wearing my soles to rubber

as I took off running in the shadowless morn—

through the stinkin' wet soil of plump tomato plants

and gritty stepping stones—

It's when I smelled the heat turning all the dew to vapor on

your newly clipped grass at dawn—the wind making trails

with my sweat in the expressways

and tailwinds ‘round my body, sapping the extract

from my Apocrine glands—

It's when I tasted blood drooling in my cracked lips and

spitting through my buzzing teeth from the lump in my throat—

my lungs collapsing, my muscles beating,

my soles burning on the sidewalk bound toward the

telephone lines above in the blue—

It's when I heard my heart go thumping its electric thud

against every clap and rough tear and breathless pant

and slap of flesh across the jagged tar—

And when I ended up losing my way that long ago day

in my trance for you I just ran home drained,

and yet up to speed again—

—for the dance.

NEXT

--Poems from the Sprawl