Love: a Musical I
I put on a song that I want to hear, because I’m my own
God. Girlfriend’s getting her broken body fixed; at work, she stands,
bends, swoops, paces, scoops, races, pauses, bored. I don’t work;
my mom (who works as an English teacher up in Alaska)
sends me four, twenty-four hundred dollar cheques
per year. When Girlfriend’s not here,
I’m left with this universe we’ve created, and I admit,
most of this stuff belongs to her. I don’t want to ask myself,
do I Feel any less human presence when she’s gone?,
because I want to keep up that I’m a lover, and some believe
that we are what we think. It takes a muscle to fall in love,
sings M.I.A. as I pull out that bit of flesh and muscle and blood
which sometimes finds warm shelter in my beloved; I release my excrement
in the toilet (two chocolate milks digested before and during Philosophy
class), shaking my hips to the groove, gazing directly at my shadowy reflection
in the ‘Reservoir Dogs’ poster. There’s a bloody cop; there’s a gun
pointed at my face; and in the distance there’s me, my whole damn persona,
or is the soul more than just a body in motion? I turn and see a human body’s shadow
shaking on the wall behind me; I think to myself, Momma told me I was born free,
but she never told me to look where I pee.