and so it begins.

Movement. When I think about what leaks from last year into this one, this is my noun. So is pausing. And remaining.

Dance. Deep inside the cacophony of bones, there is a chorus. It still clears its cellular throat. It is tuning up to see if new strings must be added or any need to be removed. It wants to call itself percussion for its yawn. This cavern is not from boredom, but from lack of breathing. I may have gone a whole lifetime not breathing correctly. Even in all my nudities, there are things I have not shown. I am searching for the flexibility to allow me to see the places on my body that have been hiding all these years.

Locate (verb) / Location (noun). Home is not necessarily a place with windows and rent payment. Let this be a year I find it within myself. All these carvings and graffiti notations. Where does the compass of my body direct me to go.

Love (noun). I know you have been alive in me since I could speak you. But perhaps all these years I have been mispronouncing your syllable. I want to be ready for you when you strike me with your toxins. I want you to be ready for me, so my vocabulary is growing. I am studying the stones of this body for you, love. I am renaming every particle of skin for you, love. I am preparing my stories so there will be no more secrets for you, love. And nothing will be left behind because moving forward means gathering up all the leaves that have left us, flattening them for preservation, putting them away to make room for new birth. 

And so it begins.

how eloquent is beautiful

I find myself swollen from thoughts of beauty:
what is beautiful/ how to define the identity of this world and its stain on bodies.

Wednesday:
Sunburnt man on Flatbush and Fulton does sit-ups on a folded blanket and I watch his abdomen form into six-pack containers.

The need for flattened stomach goes beyond gender and home consumption.

Thursday:
As I wait for 3 train at Nostrand station, notice a young woman with pulled back hair rising from either side of her head like brunette fireworks. She is covering up her face with cover-up. 3 train arrives; we sit diagonally from each other and I watch. Several shades of grey eye shadow layering onto eyelids and thick swabs of ink called mascara to lashes and more shadow to eyes, a liner now. Lipstick, three layers and colors and notice that they shine now.

What hides beneath all these sheets of wax and powders and glitter?

Are we actually hiding out beauty or just coloring it in?

This morning, I close my eyes and find my body. Music pours out of cylinder-shaped speaker box and I think about bursting bubbles with my body. There is a Dancer beside me, far enough to hear but not feel. She tells me to choose a part of the body to notice. Eyes closed, I lift my right arm. It pretends it is in water. It pretends it is newly born. It pretends it is smooth.

I turn and turn and turn and turn and turn and turn and fall. I wash the black padded floor with my skin.

Notice your ribs, she says.

I finger them. They start to shift toward the left, then right. My hips grow jealous; they get involved too. Perhaps there is a kick and another turn. A collapse, then rise.

(I think) I am dancing.

She wants to see my text; this is far more comfortable than my body.

We talk about beautiful.
I tell her I used to live in a city where bodies were like robots, hard and mechanical. Thin. Uniformed.

I want to become fluent in the language of my body, so I can speak faster and fondle the eroticism of articulation.

(this is a process/ beyond single night performance/ this is a movement)

the most beautiful boy in the room or contemplations over coffee and banana peel

Last night, I watched a body curve into more letters than the English alphabet has ever revealed.
Last night, I watched a boy’s body curve into a new breed of animal.
Last night, Whitney Houston slipped through the cracks of Brooklyn’s walls and gave this boy reason to move.

Rain rode alongside me and rain fell over me and rain took away partial sight to see my way home and rain carried me into bed and rain made love to me.

How beautiful is ink on a forearm or how haunting is a drunk man gathering up the language to weep or how revolting is a woman collecting (inconsistent) labels in order to climb her way to the top of earth.

Dog outside window barks for me/ sirens outside window churn for me/ squirrel outside window scavenges for me/ birds outside window sing hallelujah and hip-hop intonations for me.

*
i wanted to ask him to dance but my pants were too tight but i wanted to finish my drink but i was too shy to show my body but he was too magnificent to interrupt but but but–

hey,
I’m thinking of a word that rhymes with forbearance.
When you think of it, come find me and take me back to that lake, that cabin, that tent, your bedroom, that rooftop, that field of mosquitoes and dandelions, that alley, that porch swing, that backseat.

[ok]