urination

urination

urination

I’m scared of bumping someone while they piss
those Mondays I’m a packhorse   bags hung
swinging around the urinal bodies
and one day   I know   I’ll knock someone
and they’ll piss their legs   or they’ll turn slightly
and show another man their full arc
or they’ll fall into their own wet puddle
cock limp   and neither of us will look
or he’ll look at me avoiding looking
feigning interest in the hard cream tiles
maybe it’s that I dream of being bumped
knocked from my aim by a stranger
the briefest touch during the private act
the toilet is an intimacy
only shared with parents when you are young
and once again when they are older
and with lovers when   say   on a Sunday
morning stretching into the bathroom
you wake to the sound of stream into bowl
and go to hug the naked body
stood with its back to you   and kiss the neck
and taste the whole of the night on there
and smell the morning’s pale yellow loss
and take the whole of him in your hand
and feel the water moving through him
and knowing that this is love   the prone flesh
what we expel from the body and what we let inside
we are told to tell our bodies that they are beautiful
we are told not to pass judgement on where the breath may fall
in the dry heat of July we bend our bodies beyond
their normal boundaries   push past the bones until we look
like unkempt foliage   delirious in our own abandon
we are told to root our feet into the ground   we are told
to hear all sounds around us as vibrations    we have
forgotten that the body can hold on to negativity
we are told to sigh this out   we are told that only empty
things are light enough to fly   we end by flying   hoisting
up our partners by our feet   taking the weight
on our forearms on the ground   the flier feels bodiless
until the heft begins to shake the legs and the architecture
of the limbs collapses   it needs trust in the strengthofbody
of another to support your own   to delay
and then control the falling      later   showered   fed and still
too warm       stretched out on the mattress in the new flat
nothing but dust on the bare walls   you pressed me down   took control
took me in your mouth      I regret now being so passive
but you made me feel weightless      and the next night   light gone
in the hallway   I felt my way to you to kiss you  
I had forgotten that loving could feel so calming
telling you that your body was beautiful   sighing out
the brittle disappointments from the bones   having no judgement
of what the body may want to be doing   where the breath may fall