I’m trying to teach my throat to sing 
the truth of my stomach.

I want it to know it’s okay to chirp wrongly; 
the heart chirps wrongly! 

The heart is a grand absurdity,
and the greatest achievement of alchemy!

I used to be embarrassed 
by how painful the loss of love always feels,
 
how disappointment is so like death,
the grief equally bodied and brutal.

In my body love feels like rage,
undulates dark and electric for so long

I have to shriek it out of myself 
like a cat afflicted with spirits.

I have to submit and let it spill
out over everything in my life;

I have to let it heal and destroy 
as all the powers of nature do.

The powers of my glorious body
each burn with a distinct heat

because they know that Death is here
and comes to steal us at any moment.

Still the body dares to love its life,
and I am spoiled by every sensation

which racks my body:
the intensity of color and sound

shape and size;
softness, wetness

odor and aroma and the deep
repugnance and rapture 

from all the horrendous
and glorious stinks of the earth;

the pleasures of water,
and I am a fountain:

I am a fountain,
I am a fountain!