Day 18

i took art history

no,

it took me

places faces times and changes

and throughout i did not realize why i loved it--

the words.

it has always been the words, how

when i look at ter Brugghen's

Saint Sebastian Being Tended by Saint Irene,

i see in language.

cold iron skin made new again, hungry for color.

shadows the signs where unknowable secrets have pierced.

I picture ter Brugghen's brush crying paint, his canvas seeping tears.

Sweet relief.

My mind springs into sound, into these

attempts of

odes and elegies

unforming, the stories like

fragile twirls of orange peel, scripted off into

circles, the way my best friend does it , into spherical perfection

--i touch it and, like most things, it falls apart

i took biology

no it took me--

stories of anansi

here comes papa spider, tapping on the web

letting mama know it's him, it's him

the death knell--

mr. honda crouches down.

like whispering to get your attention

tells stories.

seventh grade science, he taught me wonder.

i loved science rabidly.

the paramecium i saw

with the funny line through it-- dividing--

it was sacrilege! this was pornographic! creation, lived out on my scale, and could it be

i saw it?

i opened my eyes wide, wider, like it could float into my brain that way

as if each microscopic line in my irises

were a doorway to everything

there was to know.

i loved words first.

the aching planes of scapula, the cauldron-bell sound of patella, that's how i learned

what keeps us

inside us.

i took the newspaper,

read the reviews

when people talk about modern art, they feel it with words,

each shape grasped with them, and the music reviews

you want to taste, raw and leaping and the ridges in your teeth

how germane, how profane,

to say lothario, to think it.

don't make me decide where i want to go--

i only follow the words, since--

life grabbed me by the words

they're what i know.