Desire is the bull. He is heavy with muscle and blind with instinct. He wants to eat, mate, slobber and, should the opportunity arise, run us through with his dirty horns. He can not be blamed for any of it. We admire his simplicity, fertility, and power. He scares the living daylights out of us. The following text is about desire. I write to feel the power of creation, destruction, control. Writing gives me what I can not have in life and delivers me from the agony of domesticity.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Donna Summer

There is something about the way
she rolls that voice across thin glass notes
that step back, way back,
to let her slip on through.
A spinning, slow throb,
the distant drum
of a freight train moving through town,
sound broken by blocks
of buildings, cars,
the wailing call of sirens and mothers,
but moving on through,
relentless.
It finds you curled on your bed
thinking about Donna, girl,
long-backed Diva with soft, black curls,
good lipstick and pink, sharp-heeled stilettos.

See how that voice rolls you over
to face the window,
rain-spotted day
smelling metal green through the rust-flaked screen;
how it rolls your eyes
to the brown and yellow curtains,
water stained, with the reek of an anguished electric charge
from spent thunderstorms that swept through
too sudden to close up the house.

Donna has all kinds
of currents going on,
working the tones into
bones bent, working sweat-hard
all July day long.
She sings “Last Dance,”
you remember all that
disco inferno,
how it would be
with a sequined tube top
and black satin pants.

The ball will fall, they say,
Times Square choked with
waves of wet-palmed screamers
clutching each other
as the new year turns
in a bulb-lit globe.
Dick Clark makes it official,
Barry Manilow makes us cry.

Bet you never thought
Donna would fade away
with the cool glow,
black vinyl disks
spinning scratchy,
Solid Gold.

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