Light reflects black tattoos off a white body,
black paint singed in the black kiln
by the grateful maker who spun the potters wheel
to forge the bond between two souls.
I watch bulging black muscles lift gigantic tubs
of white paint from one place to another
along with the day’s burdens,
my loneliness and longing
for hands to touch my cloud-white, hirsute body,
the same hands that molded the clay,
pressed, squeezed, massaged into shape
the caressed sinews into arms
together, one arm grown from the other,
black-white, white-black embraced,
touched in just the right places.
The ancient clay could be Greek or African,
archaeologists have yet to tell,
but I can tell skin is the same skin,
muscle the same muscle,
bone the same bone that bends the pain,
alone, together, burned in the paint of tattoos,
in the ancient caption carved below the scene:
passion, idealism, romance, eros,
feet, ankle, thigh, leg, waist, balls, penis, clitoris, vagina,
chest, breast, nipple, neck, face, head, rock-veined arms,
hairy or not, black or white, of the earth.
Of the artist who made this artifact,
critics will say: too much passion,
too sentimental, too derivative, too idealist.
Give me the passion when the tone is silence!
when to question means to fear,
the illicit embrace when human love dissolves
into animal disillusion and disgrace,
the bone when only stone seems best alternative.
Give me the passion as buffer against the tyrant,
as antidote to vain idiots and scoundrels.
Give me the passion of the earth
as it screams from an ancient belly.
Thomas D. Jones (he/him) is transplant from New Jersey now living in Rhode Island and formerly the publisher of Wings Literary Magazine and Litlover (online). His poetry has appeared in Hudson County Multicultural Anthology; Paterson Literary Review; Appleseeds: Or, How We Got Here: Americana Poetry; Beyond the Rift: Poets of the Palisades; New Jersey Bards Poetry Review Anthology; Rhode Island Bards Poetry Review Anthology; Home Planet News; and Arlington Literary Review online, to name a few. His books include Genealogy X and Voices from the Void (Poets Press). Read more at tdjonespoet.weebly.com and poetdude.substack.com.
