Self 2

I must be far from men and women
To love their ways.
I must be on a mountain
Breathing greatly like a tree
If my heart would yearn a little
For the peopled, placid valley.
I must be in a bare place
And lonely as a moon
To find the graceless ways of people
Worthful as a flower’s ways,
A flower that lives for loneliness
And dies when beauty dies.

I cannot find music
On the tongues of men and women
Unless I hear their voices
Like echoes, silence-softened.
Their many words mean little.
Their mouths are blatant sparrows.

I must be far from men and women,
As God is far away,
To keep my faith with Beauty,
My heart sweet towards them,
And love them with a god’s tranquility.

This loneliness encaged in me
That has no curious heart for life,
No ribald blood, no treacherous flesh
Nor golden wickedness of song,
This loneliness that prays in me,
Is it not somewhat like a nun?

See the clasped hands, the secret eyes,
The lips pressed close for fear of love!
What if I make her drunk one day
With wine or some unholy need
Then leave the cell door open wide––
Think you she might be tempted out?

Which is to say that like a good theoretical objectified body, my identity was created not by me but by the various desires and beliefs of those around me. 
– Daniel Borzutzky
 
My body is a small cave door                     
it’s a slick whale 	a jubilant
sea of tall grass that sways
& makes its way across countries          
& lovers             I love	        love-making
I don’t remember a time when             
I wasn’t interested in touch
I have these breasts
& some 	         would want to come     
on hands 		      & knees to worship them               
call me flower   	      or         	       desert
Maybe I was only supposed to be
stone or a baby eel                    
long & layered		          a nun?
I don’t remember ever saying  
              yes 		      just	 no
I am searching   for my own body    
not the one I was told is so                    
I want to be always  open                
	     like a canyon
Maybe I was only supposed to be           
tree or temple              
In some circles I am
just an open gate          
a sinful  bauble  

Once someone said you are 	       this      
& I  never questioned it

I am searching		           my own body   
for        	        God      

or someone like her—