Rich Quatrone- A Poem

                                        WHAT OUR BODIES SAY TO US

 

If we only knew how to listen to our bodies.

How to listen and then to have the intelligence,

the wisdom, and most of all the courage to do

what they tell us.

 

But the vast majority of us do not know how to

listen. Not in the West particularly.

 

Here we beat the body into submission.

We starve it, train it, exhaust it, we pleasure it,

often without love, we demand it perform in

gyms. And then we display it. We tease each

other with it. Or we compare it to others, most

often with hubris or, at times, malice.

 

But we never listen.

 

Our relationship to our bodies if like the relationship

we had with Vietnam, or to Afghanistan now, or

to Iraq. The same relationship we had with the Natives

in the "Americas," and with the Africans we made our

slaves

 

We have not listened to our bodies. And we still

don't.

 

What our bodies really tell us is beneath this

colonialist mentality. Beneath the capitalist mentality.

Beneath the greed, the aggression, beneath the militaristic

attitude we have towards ourselves and others.

 

Our bodies tell us to go deeper. To yield. To surrender.

To feel. This, more than anything, to feel. And what we feel

in ourselves we should feel in others. To learn compassion

and empathy from what we feel.

 

Our bodies tell us to love. To give. To empty the storehouses.

To release the silos of their grain. To ease the pain of the workers.

To share the bounty of the earth. To heal the terrible, long damage

and violence we've inflicted, on our bodies and spirits, on the

earth.

 

And our bodies promise us things not even this poem

can imagine.

RICH QUATRONE is a poet, playwright, novelist.  His most recent novel is THE MAGIC HOUSE, available on Amazon. He is also the Artistic Director of The American Poetry Theater, located in Asbury Park, NJ, and Producing Director of Playwrights on the Rise at the Strand Theater, in Lakewood, NJ.