*note: For archival and other purposes, I’m sharing here my old poetry, most of which was written between 1998 and 2003. Before I turned to painting, my creativity came out in words.*
Map of Flesh
~2003
Weaving the red thread through dreams,
wearing the map on my flesh.
One breath into emptiness.
My skin was caught by landmarks,
the points from which a figure
was made and pulled through.
An amphibian summoning
the will to pull itself out of the water
for the first time.
Is it better to wait until it is as easy
as rolling over and lazily opening
one’s eyes from near-sighted red
to the deathlike blinding white?
Points of discomfort tending to pain,
laying on his chest in the dark,
a chain around my neck
and a wig on my head.
I felt the body’s points like marks
on a map, these points were stitches, stones.
And as the flesh collapsed and withdrew,
then spun itself and reformed, these points
remained and became
the foundation of this strange and wonderful
ancient landscape. Our flesh
ceased to matter.
Now neither fish nor flesh,
siamese twins with newly forming legs,
we emerged and floated,
drawn by a light.
My mouth opened
like a void and the flesh swelled
to meet it not
the flesh but the light
and I became a hole.