Other Bodies

Other Bodies (written March 2010)

I feel my Body,

      it is filled with hunger.

      hungry for touch.

      hungry for love.

And I wonder, do these other bodies

      those other persons

      do their bodies feel like mine?

I walk down the street,

      searching with my eyes,

      searching through my memories,

With naked eyes and pregnant memories,

      (incarnate with feeling)

           and see bodies not my own.

The pure body of the young child – full of innocence.

The soiled body of the prostitute, empty of hope.

The proud body of the athlete, full of vigor.

The exhausted body of the factory worker, empty of reserves.

The soft body of the playboy, full of grace and charm,

                                             (yet empty of Alētheia and Eros)

The gluttonous body of the rich man, full of indigestion.

The battered body of the homeless man, empty of all but shame and envy.

The bruised body of the child in the slum, stomach full of hunger

                                                               foraging for nourishment,

                                                               himself misplaced in the garbage.

The feverish body of the AIDS patient, vulnerable in every way,

                                                               empty of means to defend himself.

The painful body of the injured man, wounded not defeated,

                                                               full of grit and determined.

The broken body of the cripple, full of bitterness at that word,

                                                               yet so apt in all its horror.

I see all these bodies.

Seeing them only in part.

Revealed only in part.

The beings they express,

      expressing only in part.

What then does my body express, and what

      does being beneath convey?

Innocence,

hopelessness,

pride and vigor,

emptiness,

soft deceit,

Alētheia and Eros.

Gluttony,

Envy,

Hunger,

Lostness,

Vulnerability,

and brokenness.

All these things I feel, and yet,

      I have no caricature to express.

The torments under inwardly I groan.

      My Body is me.

I wish to be divorced from it.

but it does not allow our irreconcilable differences,

           to be cause for separation.

And so, we hunger and suffer together.

I feel my Body,

      it is filled with hunger.

      hungry for touch.

      hungry for love.

And I wonder, do these other bodies

      those other persons

      do their bodies feel like mine?

           with naked eyes and pregnant memories,

                incarnate with feeling.