in all your tensions, angles in your spine,
my hands; some cosmic smugness
someone can remind us
what it was to fly
bronnie
on 4/15/02 6:04 PM, Scout Thompson at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Back Rubs and Birdlike Crash Landings
==============================
When your back had all the qualities of heated steel
there would be hours involved in breaking it
before I could relax you enough, to let your shoulders
go where they belonged, like some injured bird.
My thumbs in your back were a learned trick,
picked up in New York City, a city whose streets
would build a knot in my spine the size of a walnut.
It was a Chinese Man, who forced me into a chair
and told me, "twenty dollar."
There was a space between your hairline and eyes
to the sides of your forehead, which would tell me
your mood. Some of these languages we forget
even when speaking them constantly: perhaps
there is something new in forgetting how to read.
There was the blue current that rushed alone,
suffocating beneath your skin. In every frustration
there never came a single wrinkle. Your eyebrows
would rise some three quarters of an inch up;
and your hairline would slide back; as if by hand
but you could not furrow, even if you tried.
In all your tensions, you stored what remains
between your eyes, and my fingers would walk
along the arch of your nose, to release them.
In your silences; shoulder blades were invisible;
until you were tan from digging your holes.
Then, there were angles in your spine. Tendons
would form solid hills, continental drifting in and out
with every breath- My hands were making maps,
so better to find all these words you couldn't say.
In the avoidance of your spine, I found parallels.
Your lower back would go first, and from there
I could knead your flesh to your neck, my hands
bursting into a flock of birds, nesting in your hair,
sending leaves back to your shoulders, land sliding
so forcefully to where they came from. I tried
to turn your landscape into an ecosystem.
So much of the human back was designed
to support a set of wings. All this space we have,
storing the weight of all these tensions; gathered
from when we decided to land, so that we could
not take flight again. Is all of this designed to be
some cosmic smugness? If so, why grant reprieves
as I received from you, stomach on the floor
your legs folded by my legs, hands on my back
drawing routes of your own into my flesh?
I learned never to let my hand leave your body
until the back rub had ended. To do so, I imagine
would recreate the trauma of falling from the sky.
They were always acting like it was so god damned
sexy; but isn't all of our survival based on finding
comforts in these connections of hands or breaths,
on whether someone can remind us what it was to fly
even if only in their hands, until they began to ache?
-e.
