i cannot just love you with my belly button



very little poetry has moved me as of late. but then again, as my own writing has been silenced, so has my search for inspiration within the pages of neruda, cisneros, hagedorn, hooks, gibran, hafiz, rumi, and bukowski (yes, drunken, brutal, poetry amuse me.)



but then, there comes a time with inspiration finds you. and you can breathe a sigh of relief



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“Love Song”--Marra Lanot



I cannot love you

Only with my head

Or only with my heart

Or only with my belly button

Or with fingers and toes



I may fall in love

With one or more parts

Like swimming among lilacs

Or squirming and diving

Again and again

And again



But if I love you

we have to rise

and chase butterflies

or follow a bird

to the end of a rainbow

though we won’t find answers

to never ending questions



If you wish to love me

Do not only with your eyes

That blaze like sunrise

And turn from coal to ashes

Not only with your palms

That knead the sweat

From my hips

But do not touch my soul



Not only with your belly button

That mirrors nothing

Not even the mask you don

For your superiors and your enemies

Not with bended knee

To worship me

That crackle at the whim of youth

And at the whip of age



If you love me

Know me too

And do with all of you

And yourselves

you have yet to meet

and yourselves you

still have to embrace

for I am not only cistern,

but also lake, river, rain

the sea of life



I am not a vase

Or just a piece of land,

But earth that floods

And quivers at the spine

To reject or accept

Anything foreign

To my soil

I am not a canvas

Nor mere paper

But the story and substance

Without which you cannot

Paint or write or sing



If you learn to love me

With or without the monotone

Of always and forever

Then I won’t need

Others in fragments

Other who tear me to pieces

To match me body part by body part



Then shall we know

Love is not falling

Or being caged or strangled

Or winning a race

But opening, sharing

Little by little

As flower unfolds

Naturally, curls into fruit

Or fades into another bud

Yes, rising, flying

Soaring, changing

Being reborn

Being whole

Becoming

Being