Ahimsa

---

         It is not enough

         To love you. It is not enough to want you destroyed.

                    -Terrance Hayes

If someone loved me                         then cut the birds from my tongue

expeller-pressed the air from my lungs                     one wing at a time

dismembered me                                       could I look back with the

lotus eyes of compassion                   see how they stain themselves?

gouge and bleed?                              Could I join them in the darkroom

dip negatives               in a chemical bath                               peg the damp

curls of nascent photographs from our lives

                                                          on a clothesline to drip dry overnight?

Would you judge me a fool if I said my love

is a parched well that never quits reaching for the aquifer?

Born under a water-sign, I fight different                               Canyons are hewn

by a licking stream                                           a tongue worrying stone after stone

like loosened teeth       My love-song is a blood-song           survival-song

The bird boxed by night sings for us both