Mr. Africa Poetry Lounge!
The Tattooed Man
I gaze at you,
longing longing,
as from a gilt
and scarlet cage;
silent, speak
your name, cry-
Love me.
To touch you, once
to hold you close-
My jungle arms,
their prized chimeras,
appall. You fear
the birds-of-paradise
perched on my thighs.
Oh to break through,
to free myself-
lifer in The Hole-
from servitude
I willed. Or was
it evil circumstance
that drove me to seek
in strangeness strange
abiding-place?
Born alien,
homeless everywhere,
did I, then, choose
bizarrity,
having no other choice?
Hundreds have paid to gawk at me-
grotesque outsider whose
unnaturalness assures them they
are natural, they indeed
belong.
But you but you,
for whom I would
endure caustic acids,
keenest knives-
you look at me with pain,
avert your face,
love's own,
ineffable and pure
and not for gargoyle
kisses such as mine.
Da Vinci's Last Supper-
a masterpiece
in jewel colors
on my breast
(I clenched my teeth in pain;
all art is pain
suffered and outlived);
gryphons, naked Adam
embracing naked Eve,
a gaiety of imps
in cinnabar;
the Black Widow
peering from the web
she spun, belly to groin-
These that were my pride
repel the union of
your flesh with mine.
I yearn I yearn.
And if I dared
the agonies
of metamorphosis,
would I not find
you altered then?
I do not want
you other than you are.
And I-I cannot
(will not?) change.
It is too late
for any change
but death.
I am I.
Written by Robert Hayden (1913-1980)
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