The deepest truths cannot be taught
        except by experience--
        Genet's face, that jail of dreams, each line
        in the forehead, a galley where lives pitch, hitched
        to the wilderness skin molds over.

        This is how castaways touch, littered
        with the bright density of stars dead & far flung.
        How closeness requires effort, even while at
        the thing: flesh merging in grips of kisses that sigh
        out of harms past...
        The scars of arms now tattoo smooth, the creamy slopes
        of hirsute moss,
        all trained, so trained to only be disclosed in fits,
        in stolen shadows...

        Crowded into the pits, the mess halls, the tunnels--
        There's a rite, there's a system of degradation early
        on.
        Stand at attention. Open the mouth, the body for
        spit, for flogging,
        for an erosion which will carve out an edifice for
        masks.

        Thus, gutted, left up to tests, paranoid, persecuted,
        it is a phenomenon
        if contact should happen: the coveted signals, the
        mix of tenderness & rough
        stubbled chins in hands, on heads shaved likewise so
        the bones may be pure
        as letter paper sneaking words forth as rose petals,
        that miracle, that moon.

        Where's the point of a scream if there's no one to
        listen?
        In this society of secrecy gesturing song from dusky
        air, the sheer shearing of touch
        nights & corners share, the screams do not need an
        execution to happen, to happen,
        as it will, in order to be heard.

        My lover, you chicken, brute, pimp, pirate,
        all the names that we call each other to distinguish
        what's still a blur
        of reform schools, of prisons... come set sail, come
        any way, come soft
        to this cabin though anyone may see, & I will
        shield, shield

        how you let down your guard.

Copyright © Stephen Mead, 2004. All Rights Reserved.