an early poem.

for you all.

FUNDACIO JOAN MIRO, MONT JUIC

Painting and poetry are done in the same way you make love; its an exchange of blood, a total embrace—without caution, without any thought of protecting yourself.” – Joan Miro

A homeless man pinched my nipple once on Nou de la Rambla

in front of the supermercat on my way to class, the same store

that the screaming lady with a splinted arm tries to steal candy bars

from everyday, a Voll Damm beer in her good hand, a glassed look

in her black eyes. I didn’t know what to say to the homeless man

and his dirty fingernails coming at me or the woman and her beer

but I wanted to speak in my broken Spanish, if only to say your welcome

for the feel and stop screaming, I’m trying to sleep. He probably would have

turned around and smacked me on the ass, and she’d have sat me down

with a yell and tried to warn me of the next inquisition, braced arm waving defiantly over her head. Dylan and I could hear her now as we made our way

toward Mont Juic to the Miro museum. We knew we’d miss her, her screams a lullaby we’d come to expect from El Raval, along with

the doner kebabs, the street we coined Tranny Alley with corners full of big,

beautiful men and women strutting their oiled limbs, locking arms with

young Americans stumbling home at 4 a.m. until they are pushed off the streets by the trucks with the long thick hoses, spraying water every few

hours, circulating, cleaning the city. From Mont Juic on this particular day

the shanties had a silver lining. Sagrada and the Torre Agbar stood erect, pointing skyward, symbols of God and water.

The kelp of the city will reach their fingers out and touch,

without caution, total embrace hands to our nipples, our heads, our knees,

as if to say go forward in one breath and you are never free

from me in the other. This is the exchange of blood, this touching, this hurt, this pulse

of the city, the falling down from 12 inch sidewalks into gutters, climbing to the top of art museums to see the shanty rooftops stacked, some

white, some green, some falling inward. One day in mid October Barcelona and I

stopped in the center of the playground and pricked our fingers with found razor blades.

We pressed them together. I feared nothing but separation. Living is like

making love, all that blood, embrace. We try to protect ourselves,

but how could we ever, with all those beautiful bodies running around us, their dirty hands, splinted arms, oiled limbs, thick hoses. The lark's wing ringed in the blue of gold meets the heart of the poppy asleep on the field studded with diamonds, 1967.

A black line divides us. I am black and blue. I am already lonely.

My bloody thumbprint, your diamond field.