The Poet’s Hands

The poet’s hands are the only things catching the light suspended from the garage as we lounge, in wait for the coming storm. It dangles from an orange extension cord, in the mild wind it turns, brightening and then darkening the yard, dangling, dancing the light. For a moment the world is bathed in darkness and then, there and for just a moment again, the light hanging there makes clear those instruments, lovely and deadly, capable of such beauty, such destruction. Death and life and love and the storm, all together wrapped up in those ten fingers. The sky above is alluring, the same colour as the ink staining his fingertips; the telltale blue and black, which spills, like blood, and which won’t wash off because he is the one who is guilty, his hands are the parchment, his body is. The poet’s hands are full, they hold a half empty glass bottle of strong amber liquid and a half full chipped mug of the same. The poet’s stomach and my own hold the other half. He smiles and his hand reaches the bottle across his long lap to me, he says he’s been sending me telepathic messages, for hours now, for years, and to be fair, I’ve felt them the same way I feel it when the storm moves faster and faster still across the world to where we are, with the same apprehensions, the same anticipation, the same earthy need. I’ve been smelling it in the air. I take the bottle from these poet’s hands and move it to my mouth. The light has turn itself around and rested, leaving us happily in quiet darkness, but there is lightning in the sky far away and I see his face for just a second, and his mouth is open and his eyes are open and I smile “You want to set my insides to fire?” I am bold now, like crass sudden claps of thunder, and he follows me, like lightening, laughing, because his message came to me in a bottle. I take a long drink from it, and as the amber liquid washes about, like liquid gold in my stomach, I shake my head and my body shivers.
“Actually, yes”. He laughs again and it’s the three beat rhythmic laugh he makes when he knows he’ll soon be flopping about in the rain and using a clean half bottle of Gibson’s Finest as protection against the cold hardness of the ground, as lubrication for love that gets made and unmade,
The poet has moved stereo speakers, some high tech cordless magic outside to beside the house, not far from where we sit. Miles Davis trumpets from the Fillmore, slightly closer than the rumble of summer thunder whose impending vibration rumbles right now farther than that distant liquid energy, but moving fast. He not like Davis especially, but this occasion calls for magic jazz, hot and cool rhythms and the intensity of genius found only in the pulsing fingers of those most like gods: the obsessed, the driven, almost not real, almost not now. An hour earlier, the poet took me by the hand, and lured me with promises of movable jazz, jazz that can be taken with us, appealing to my need for constant artfulness, combining my needs.
Fat raindrops begin to hurl themselves from the pregnant sky, and neither of us flinches from the wet. We aren’t the flinching type, the poet and I.
He navigates us in the dark past domestic child sized trees and swings and a tame gazebo. We aren’t looking for a shelter. We find ourselves suddenly naked, somewhere between the time it takes to improve on human nature and the time it takes to debase it. The thunder shakes the whole world and we are off our feet. Lightning hits the sky, catching on the shiny side of the rain and we are on our backs, The thunder is repetitive, the thunder rolls and rolls and the poet says from on top of me “Maybe we brought it with us again” and I laugh. The inside of me is turned amber with the influence of whiskey and lust and June rain and those hands around me, my back to the ground, a slight impression of the curves of my young body, his hands in the soft brown dirt, summer angels of grass and mud.
His hands, those poet’s hands are on me, and my body is slipping wet and the ground is wet, Miles Davis is soaking, somewhere farther now, than the thunder, and still we are not flinching from the rain. The poet’s hands are on my body, the poet’s hands are on me, and the ink doesn’t drain onto my skin and I kiss the poet’s hands and they are on my mouth. There aren’t enough places for those hands, there aren’t enough places in the world for those hands, and nothing touches like the cool rain, a sort of freshness, quelling fire.
When the storm begins to slow, the poet’s hands brush stray leaves from my knotted hair. He tells me all about the meaning of everything, and he is imperfect, the highest order of deceit, but those hands don’t lie. We laugh, standing straight up in the dark night. We take longer than is necessary to collect our clothing, standing naked with our backs to that sky. We can see in windows. Normal people are watching prime time TV. We hope, the both of us, that we are never normal.
The poet and I are allies. We walk together, not touching, complicit in our wet desires, in our sated need, in what we take life to be, what we take out of it, these sounds, this place, those hands. Once we are back inside, my body is forgotten as he strums a battered guitar, sounds of love and loss ring in the air, the work of his hands, and I am made, unmade. Exhausted. I call a cab, and when it arrives I don’t need to look back. These are all repeatable patterns. I leave the hands, those chords strumming softly, but take the jazz along.

Michelle Miller