bigger (12/17/82)
Brother In my dream I work over your cool body like some sadistic lover. Pound the chest, pump it sixtimes, fill the lungs twice. You just lie there where you fell like clay. In the barnyard we worked cattle and when your heart faltered you stumbled (you never had before) and you closed the gate after the last, slow, ancient cow. A step and you just fell like a slapstick actor. Six times, try to move sluggish fluid to your brain (four minutes they say) two lungfulls of my useless breath, six times. Listen I only clench my eyes hard; there's no time to wipe away any salty tears. Beat the chest with my fist that one day I might see bruises heal push six times two loving kisses six again. Alone it seems important that the ratio is right but I just don't know two six (come on) two There will be no clean paramedics here, with sterile plastic bags and shiny metallic jolts; there are only my manure caked hands and foul mouth. Press you chest six times, twice your chest rises, you chest falls and I have breathed a dozen times. Again the hands, and you lie there. With my ear smooth against your chest I still only hear the black cows bellowing for hay. Harder: two your calm face says don't bother six (or five) two and there's a hoarse and voiceless scream six two, a rhythm six my back twosix the scream is mine the scream is yours two your movement is mine such a gentle rocking sixtwo all your breath was mine once and I work the body as if it was at your thought. (four minutes they say) six two six, side by side. The action is involuntary like my heart that beats twice where it had beat only once three six (and what do they say of hours?) Where was I; two six and our arms don't move, the two of us, one, two. Lying here as still as you, there's a tearing in my chest, and I gasp breath, pant, too fast, but it's ok, you're not using yours. Not bad, two in one night. Night. God, it's dark. I've been working the body in my sleep and the cattle are a thousand miles away. But, we are truly brothers now.