The Things Inside

I carry the blood of pig farmers in my veins,
of the hoeing of peanuts and corn so tall
the boy I was and the man I am can still get lost in the fields.
I carry the sound of peepers in the swamp behind the barn,
and the clank clank sound of sows feeding in the night.

I carry the sound of choirs, my mother’s and my grandmother’s,
old hymns, always in perfect time, never dragging,
the promises of those songs far more important than the key.
Music fills me. My father’s dixieland jazz and the devil’s blues,
piano solos early in the morning and crying guitars.

My veins are full of salt cured ham, and green beans
picked fresh in the morning and cooked in fatback for supper.
They are rich with sugar and butter and eggs stolen
from the nests of chickens, sometimes still warm
as you broke them in to cast iron frying pans.

In me flows the blood of brutes and alcoholics,
of saints and scoundrels, blood of the meek and never quite broken.
in me flows the blood of wise men and muscle men,
of the curious and the afraid.
All of it somehow, lives in me.

There are doctors there too, and Spanish dancers, Victorian relics
and those that understand numbers and those that disdain them.
Breathe deeply and you will smell the dank waters of Blackwater Swamp,
and fresh mown grass. You will smell the sour stench of sweat,
old hay, incense and prayers.

Breathe deeply and listen to a heart that races with fear and passion,
with hope and foolishness. Breathe again and hear a mind
running rampant with words and beatings and a need to escape
and the will to resist escape. Breathe one, slow breath
and a whiff of perfume of every woman I have knows rises.

Cut me, and pain leaks out. Sorrow leaks out. Failure runs like water.
Cut me and I bleed silently, trained by the best not to cry out.
Cut me, and if you are patient, watch me heal, for in the end,
I know no better.