Buttercups

 

I want to get dirty

A Tibetan bell sings

I want to get dirty

with your mud

I said, or thought, deeply

Barefoot wearing a fake fur coat you stand

I know you’re naked underneath

Your muscular body, smooth chest and long hair

You look like a 19th century eccentric noble man, or woman

Somebody from a different time or in-between times

I want to get dirty

and wild

teach me how to do that

to grow my beard and hair and not care about judgement

grit under my nails

no I don’t do deodorant thank you very much

smell my armpits and if you don’t like it tough titicaca

I dreamt I was walking barefoot to town

I dreamt I was walking barefoot to the Tor

You told me to wear a sarong and I did

I was naked underneath, like you

but I kept my lumberjack flannel shirt

Barefoot I walked to town and found no one

Bright yellow buttercups were smiling at me

bouncing and mooing with the stinky cows

I was smelling the armpit of Glastonbury,

its green inner sanctum up high in the sky

I climbed it (am I still dreaming or did it happen for real?)

And exhaled

A long one, like when you finally manage to pee after holding it for hours

My grandma is looking at me from an old black and white picture

Bells are ringing in my old Italian village

I hated that dusty suffocating hole

But I often come back to it

A vicious circle

Bells are ringing for my dad’s funeral now

Monotone and sombre

I smell carob in the air all the time

Is it fear? Of failing?

Is it lust?

My body gets twisted in bed

(with pleasure, you murmur in my ear, a cunning smile)

singing of the muddy road

A whisper comes from the clouds

I get covered in flowers and leaves

disappearing in the tall vermillion grass

Buttercups are kissing me now

Buttercups