doing it differently

by marge piercy, from to be of use

1.
trying to enter each other,
trying to interpenetrate and let go.
trying not to lie down in the same old rutted bed
part rack, part cocoon.
we are bagged in habit
like clothes back from the cleaners.
the map of your veins has been studied,
your thighs have been read and reported,
a leaded mistrust of the rhetoric of tenderness
thickens your tongue.
at the worst you see old movies in my eyes.
how can i persuade you that every day we choose
to give birth, to murder or feed our friends, to die a little.

2.
you are an opening in me.
smoke thick as pitch blows in,
a wind bearing ribbons of sweet rain,
and the sun as field of dandelions, as rusty razor blade.
scent colors the air with tear gas, with lemon lilies.

most of the time you are not here.
most of the time we were different faces.
mostly i do not touch you.
mostly i am talking to someone else.

i crawl into you, a bee furry with greed
into the deep trumpeting throat of a crimson lily
speckled like a newly hatched robin.
i roll, heavy with nectar.
later i will turn this afternoon into honey
and live on it, frugally.
it will sweeten my tea.

3.
in the pit of the night our bodies merge,
dark clouds passing through each other in lightning,
the joining of rivers far underground in the stone.
i feel thick but hollow, a polyp floating on currents.
my nerves have opened wide mouths
to drink you in and sing O O on the dark
till i cannot fix boundaries where you start and i stop.
then you are most vulnerable.
in me that nakedness does not close by day.
my quick, wound, door, my opening,
my lidless eye.

don't you think it takes trust,
your strength, your temper always
in the room with us like a doberman unleashed.
i fear being manipulated
by that touch point between us.

touch is the primal sense -
for in the womb we swam lapped and tingling.
fainting, practicing death, we lose
sight first, then hearing, the mouth and nose deaden
but still till the end we can touch.

. . .

5.
beds that are mirrors,
beds that are rotisseries where i am the barbecue,
beds that are athletic fields for the olympic trials,
beds that are dartboards, beds that are dentist's chairs,
beds that are consolation prizes floating on chicken soup,
beds were lobotomies are haphazardly performed,
beds of wet spaghetti, beds
that ride glittering through lies like a ferris wheel. . .

you do not want to say that word
yet that small commitment floating on a sea of spilled blood
has meaning if we inflict it.
otherwise we fail into dry accommodation.
if we do not build a new loving out of our rubble
we will fall into a bamboo-staked trap on a lush trail.
you will secrete love out of old semen and gum and dreams.
what we do not remake
plays nostalgic songs on the jukebox of our guts,
and leads us into the old comfortable temptation.

6.
you lay in bed depressed, passive as butter.
i brought you a rose i had grown. . .
you talked of fucking the rose. then you grew awkward;
we would never be free of roles, dominance and submission,
we slam through the maze of that pinball machine forever. . .

7.
the state owns my womb and hangs a man's name on me
like the tags hung on dogs, my name is, property of. . .
the language betrays us and rots in the mouth
with its aftertaste of monastic sewers on the palate.
even the pronouns tear my tongue with their metal plates.

you could strangle me: my hands
can't even encircle your neck.
because i open my mouth wide and stand up roaring
i am the outlawed enemy of men.
a party means what a bullfight does to the bull.
the street is a gauntlet.

i open my mail with tongs.
all the images of strength in you, fathers and prophets and heroes,
pull against me, till what feels right to you
wrongs me, and there is no rest from struggle.

we are equal if we make ourselves so, every day, every night
constantly renewing what the street destroys.
we are equal only if you open too on your heavy hinges
and let your love come freely, freely, where it will never be safe,
where you can never possess.

8.
for part of each month regularly as my period
i crave you.
when we mesh badly, with scraping and squeaking,
remember that every son had a mother
whose beloved son he was,
and every woman had a mother
whose beloved son she wasn't.
what feels natural and easy, is soft murder
of each other and that mutant future
striving to break into bloom
bloody and red as the real rose.

periodic, earthy, of a violent tenderness
it is the nature of this joining
to remain partial and episodic
yet feel total: a mountain that opens like a door
and then closes
like a mountain.