Cross post from my medium blog which got a whole TWELVE claps… feeling like a celeb!! This is a poem on desire and sensory play. Inspired by Caroline Polachek’s beautiful album desire, I want to turn into you.
What does desire mean to you?
when I was little, one of my favourite places to visit was the plant nursery.
we would go every other week, to buy soil or bones for the dog -
my mum would inevitably start chatting with the curly-haired, rosy-cheeked woman who ran it
so I was allowed to wander in and out of its rooms,
through silent greenhouses with snapping plants and hallways lined with piles of compost and strange statues.
But my favourite room of all was dark and very hushed, like the inside of a barn before dawn.
in it were huge black barrels of birdseed, laid out in rows before me.
i would thrust my arms into the seeds
feeling myself going deeper and deeper,
listening to the familiar waterfall sound as they writhed around my tiny, searching hands.
I would move slowly from barrel to barrel
swimming through sunflower, peanut and thistle
drawing out what i know now to be desire:
and be touched by something that has no end.
this is the earliest memory I have, I think, of me engaging in a kind of sensory, indulgent desire:
an earthly delight, all mine, all hidden.
I learned that desire is living and loving in your body -
It is watching the tide as it swells, ebbs and flows into rock pools,
and remembering how fruit sweetens in bitter frosts.
It is the relief you feel
after running your hands through your hair, flipping it back out of your face
in the hot space of here.
we ask you to dance and to fantasise:
to meet your desire within yourself, in this space of refuge and sweat
look over the edge, but not too far.
That is where we are: this island is desire.
baratheonpilled
origamiaround
pixelskylines
kaledo-art
jacobvanloon
turnnoffyourmind
