ode to anti-poets

in this version of the story he is saying something with his hands and he is speaking to your body. in this moment you are the same as you were centuries ago. two lovers reaching for each other and seeing salvation at the other end. the paintings on the cave wall singing your praises in animal blood. in this breath you understand what the poets were writing about and realize you want no part of it. why mar the moment by contorting it into language? by pressing it into something it is not?

your hands grasp at the air and the air responds: i am art enough.

in this version of the tale you disregard an instinct. cast aside the desire to take everything you know and grasp it, trembling, drowning, until it confesses to you its poeticism.

there is glory in his heaving chest before you called it anything at all. before you knew it was a sinking ship, or the lifeboat on the other side of the ship, or the storm crashing against the walls of the ship, which is your room, which is a makeshift heaven.

your body and his body. you don’t want anything more. you don’t want the pen. you don’t want the god hiding in the ceiling guiding his hands.

tell me we’re enough. that in this moment we are the art. that in this moment we are unquantifiable and everywhere and no one can make us into a story. that i am the only one who will ever hear your song and understand.

yes, he says.