blaming Michelangelo for my fascination with art, religion, and naked men
redheads
know better now
to guard against
the dangerous sun,
but our skin
tells cavalier stories
of childhoods
cycling through
burn,
peel,
freckle,
repeat…
scars learned-from
can be badges
of endurance
and resilience,
and freckles,
like the stars,
gorgeous remnants
of playing
with fire.
The first little paint stroke of Mercurochrome to my upper lip seemed like an interesting idea at the time. I, after all, had grown my first mustache and beard over the summer of 1972, between eighth grade and my freshman year of high school. To my adolescent mind, it was a badge of maturity that went with leaving behind Catholic grade school and the redneck bullies I had endured for eight years. The next day would be my first day at Rockhurst High School, Kansas City’s Jesuit high school, several miles and mindsets away from the Hickman Mills area where my family lived just at the edge of where the suburbs met the cornfields and hunting woods. Grateful to be moving on, I had spent the summer gearing up for what I hoped, if not was almost certain, maybe, would be a new life, and part of the passage included not shaving for three months just to see what kind of beard I could grow.
Continue reading “un-fair pigment: red hair, pale skin and mercurochrome”
seeing god naked 