Obedience

in advance

Self-regulation
Self-governance
That power responsibility burden cost

Two kinds:

1. Like how my choice of words can hurt you even when I mean love, so I try to choose carefully whether and what to speak.

2. Like how to endorse a president might provoke retaliation, so better choose carefully whether and what to speak.

The same kind of anticipatory, obedience in advance.

I want to talk about the body.
Body like legs, veins, nerves, blood, eyes, eyes, eyes, guts, brains, sex.
Body like, of the church.
Body like mother earth.
Body like who’s keeping score.

Who obeys?

A third kind:

Know then that I am not
one of those beasts gone wild
who takes gardens for pastures

—Chastity, Ibn Faraj

Who obeys?

A fourth:

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master
That whining is the connection

—Love Dogs, Rumi

Who obeys?

A fifth:

That guy       a god
who sits       near you
Your voice     your eyes
For him

My heart       it stops
My tongue      it's stuck
To watch       you there
with him

—Sappho 31

Who obeys?

Father says men are fed up and women are full of themselves, and that’s why.
It’s women’s expectations.
Too many, and they’re fumbling under the lash.
That whip.

Mother says women are fed up and men are full of themselves, and that’s why.
The expectations, they’re broken.
Off-balance like blanket statements.
“I can’t breathe.”

Retaliation.
The body, the whiplash.
That’s the game we play.

Cocked and loaded, behind my loving, the trigger ready, just in case, the line rehearsed, to get back at you, to get back at me.

Who obeys?
Look through the eyes of those ones.
Here’s what I mean to say:

He lives in that eye, dexter
She lives in that eye, sinister
They gaze at each other, longing, at that heart

—broken distance
Just one line
Made of ink

Ah, you still don’t think I’ve said a thing. Then—
Let’s try this instead.

Remember when right tried to annihilate wrong?
We use so many different words
For what is the same
When we can stand
How many things can be true

Every time I try
To say something new & different
I keep returning to this place

Who obeys?
I’ve been pointing
All this time and

I think I’ve lost my eyes
For you