How many things can you call dirty?
Is dirty
the quivering of bodies when they make love
without the consent
of the hundreds whose homes
are as warm as a bucket of ice cubes?
Is dirty
the act of seeking love on your own terms?
Is dirty
the act of avoiding a four-legged prison
with a social signature on it?
Is dirty
the skin whose shade you can’t find in your palette?
Is dirty
a tongue that can’t stich together words in your language,
a tongue whose sounds seem to bounce like stones in your ears?
Am I dirty
Because of my blasphemy?
Does my indifference to your gods,
both at your altar and in your elected chair,
trigger a storm in your lungs?
When did we devise this way of sorting people?
Hanging them to dry on tightropes between our extreme binaries:
Clean, dirty.
Right, wrong.
Pure, corrupt.
NaPoWriMo 2017, Poem 16
