Classic Michael Appleby

Tonight I'm posting a rerun. Many of you out there probably haven't read this one so it might not actually be a rerun for you. Some of you have read or heard it before so I welcome you to amuse yourself in the archives somewhere. Actually, I was going to post my Bottom Ten for April, but my browser crashed as I was drafting it and I'm too frustrated to start drafting it all over again tonight. I'll get the Bottom Ten up soon, though.

The poem is inspired by Alex Grey's artwork actually. I wanted to create something that was very focused on the human body and to just stick with that.

Knot Garden
Bodies interlocked in grapple.

Start at the fingertips.
Feel the ridges of prints
like skin tumblers
and rolling into the knots
that knuckles make
before palms are pressed
to palms
and the long chutes of digits
lock to form skinny, bony gates.
Fleshy webs
that transcend,
become intricate vines at wrists,
become intersecting channels,
become, become, become.
And the crossovers at elbows
that aspire to blushing,
freckled x’s
with the narrowest of hinges,
flexing and reflexing apexes,
where four biceps
sinew this pair.

This is more than
the gesture of a kiss.

This exceeds the limits
of any embrace.

This isn’t sex
and it isn’t war.

Shoulders conspire
and the proximity of faces
practically makes them
the mirror folded in on itself.
Hair sweeps from one head to another.
Where ribs are,
they make for calcium rich walls,
walls of marrow:
anastomosis of bones,
perfect pearly xylophones.
Pumping hearts attain synchronicity;
melodies ebb
in the laying back and rolling.
Neck becomes neck.
One skin hybridizes another,
reaches to be a chameleon.
Legs wrap around a waist
or a waist falls into the hold
and feet dive between knees.
Body odors absorb each other,
become more than the sum of their parts.

When we twist,
we maintain this tightening knot,
it’s fibres kept in tact.
The act of tying
isn’t so much of an act of aggression
as it is
an act of compression.
What we learn from Greco-Roman wrestlers
are more than ways in which to brutalize each other.
We find ways to merge.

I discover new nearnesses to you.
You find ways to become a part of me.

-Michael Appleby
May, 2004