The Feeling of Health
By Anthony Rivas
- The Underground Workshops
If the imagination of disaster is so vast,
it is because there are always reasons to be unhappy.
Violence branded on our bodies
bleeds as we pick at old wounds.
Pain is produced and perfected
in the assembly line,
where busy workers take turns
shouting who’s to blame.
The mother demands an apology.
The mechanic’s botched arm will never heal.
The priest tells the child to recall their sins —
Child, I do not tell you to recall your sins.
The atmosphere is a heavy air
and it smells of spoiled milk.
Everyone’s ears are clogged with wax
muffling the sounds that struggle to reach us.
Is that a sound? — I hear a sound!
Grinding gears scream
as the workers chant the chorus —
their harmony forms a dissonant chord
that echoes through their murky halls.
I thought I heard your voice in there.
- Early Morning
Flames! Flames!
Where can one find flames
when the kindling is wet?
The Phoenix must die to be born.
The canvas is filled
only with banal colors
and familiar scenes.
The Earth sighs
and the day is just
a variation on the night.
Roads lead to dead ends.
A tree is just a tree
and nothing more.
But every eye inhabits a body
with a history of its own.
When the eye turns inward,
it finds battles, mutilations,
starvation, victory, friendships,
and the knowledge of newfound compositions.
It familiarizes itself with these,
turns outward,
and discovers a world
built in its image.
III. My Own Diversity
Have you introduced yourself to
the symphony of your body?
We move in ways that
make the smallest part large.
We move with the dance of the worm.
We move with the dance of the Sun.
Increase and increase—
bursting at seams.
Desire cannot be held in check.
I see the whole and say that it is good.
Everywhere goodness and evil
are interwoven in a tapestry.
Pain leads to strength,
strength leads to pain,
and the world is born again.
All the misfortunes of life
have produced the best.
How could I not be grateful?
There has never been a greater time
than there is now.
There has never been a brighter sun
than there is now.
There has never been so strong a wind at our back
as there is now.
There has never been so beautiful a symphony
as the one we conduct and play in.
I am passing through states—
always passing
from vitality towards sickness or
from sickness towards vitality.
Look closely—
the water is never really stagnant.
Let me contain it all.
Let it all flow to me and through me.
Let no one be hidden from me.
The hate in me protests—
shall we give it a voice?
Some bodies are botched and broken.
Can you teach them too?
Can you teach them how to dance?
I will give them my vitality
and we will move
forward and forward together.
A fraction of force.
A plurality of pulses.
I speak with many voices.
I see with many eyes.
I see the professor
walking to his office
with his nose in his book
barely aware of the blossoming world.
I see the light-footed dancer
whose violent spinning
brings forth spring.
I see all and love all—
movement and matter,
motion and increase.
The world is not contained in the world.
There is more, we feel it to be so.
Everything inches towards growth.
Life cannot hold life back.
And yet the politicians
appear before me.
They speak of laws,
but their law is not
the law which governs the trees,
the planets, you and me.
Their law is contained
in this greater law—
the law of the overflowing spring.
When I speak,
the voices of the dead speak.
When the dead were speaking,
so was I.
Move with me once more.
Hold out your hand.
Embrace these shoulders.
Introduce your arms to mine.
Introduce your heart to mine.
My breath is your breath.
We drink from the same soup.
We eat from the same plate.
We sleep in the same grave.
And the world around us awakens.
Something tells me I have yet to be born.
And I have yet to give birth
in turn to that which created me.
How much can I grasp?
How much can I grasp
until the world begins
to slip through
my fingers?
The Trinity Review 