Tear


I watch my body like I watch someone else's pet.
  It lives in my peripheral vision.
Poor dumb thing, it can't see, speak or hear,
  it grunts blows and weeps.
My body wakes up, needs a bath; needs to be rubbed,
  fed and held; cannot say what it needs.
My body wants sex from strangers, like a randy dog;
  wants smoke, wants vibration, sweets,
wants the fat of hooved animals,
  wants to gnaw on the bones of birds.
My body and I are not one.
  My body and I are not "integrated."
This is embarrassing in today's world:
  Everything should be one thing;
it's the holistic world-view; it's ecological.
  My body and I are separate. I watch my body:
It has my mother's thighs, my father's hands,
  my maternal grandfather's hair.
I think of my body as a "she,"
  even though she has a penis.
She has an American penis,
  shaped like the continent of Europe,
minus Italy.
  I watch my body. I watch the bodies of angels.
There is a strong wind
  where ever an angel treads,
and their vestments are blown around to wondrous effect.
  Angels are one with their bodies.
The bodies of angels are illusions.
  An angel is a fearsome creature
whose countenance defies description,
  will not stand for perusal by such as us.
Angels have no sex.
  They are complete. They know they are.
I've had plenty of sex.
  I've looked for my other self--my better half.
He's not here. I thought I'd found him.
  We wrestled and strained, each trying
to become one-half of the other. It doesn't work.
  We smeared each other all over ourselves,
fell back, exhausted.
  We exchanged embarrassed small-talk, phone numbers,
kissed and said good-bye.
  I want to love my body but she doesn't love me.
She complains, her nerve-ends scream.
  She plots betrayal in front of me. She grows hair,
horny hands, callouses.
  The days pass, she droops, colludes with gravity.
She lies here, waiting for burial, just in view,

entertaining hordes of unwanted guests
  who will speed her departure.
She's leaving me. She knows it,
  won't bother with denials. Today, tomorrow,
in one year, in forty, I'll wake up.
  I'll see her--old, rotten and not with me.
All that she was will never be.
  And I'll be watching her.