Body Politics

Body Politics

Poetry by Cathy Colman
Music by Jerry Gerber

And if you think about it, the word free conjures voting and

animals leaping back to the wild and here, I put my head on

your shoulder in the 1950’s even before I was born and

it’s still there watching Rebel Without A Cause but we have a cause

to be hyper-aware, so if you’re reading this, it’s too late because

the fair is closed and the unfair is open, the whole country alight

with uncivil rites, and if you think about it the word free also

conjures fighters and couches on the curb and everyone doing

a shaky dance with congas and even snakes fleeing from their

charmers and if he says he’s a woman, he’s a woman and I’m

a man, and if I say I’m a man, then he’s still a woman, so bake

the wedding cake with a lucky coin inside, drown the hall

in purple hydrangeas until we eat, drink, and bypass the sale

that says Everything Must Go because scientists have taken

the first ever photograph of light as both a wave and a particle

which explains so much about swimming and kissing and that old

electricity that ignited between us when you passed the beer and

our fingers got entangled forever, and all I can do is go to sleep

to trucks striking their tires on the curb which sounds like

the percussion in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and dream of the dot

and the line, a kind of Morse Code that says, I’m still alive

what about you?

Copypyright 2020 Jerry Gerber & Cathy Colman