Brave Performances

An artist is nude and in peril

For the same reason artists paint nudes

To their and the nudes’ peril, the same

Reason you have dreams you’re in peril

Or nude or surrounded by people,

Most of whom are nude, to your peril.

Human bodies are vulnerable,

Ridiculously so, dependent

On other human bodies and more,

Far more than that, on the assistance

And tailored accoutrements of tongues

And other human technologies

To steer clear of pain, skins unbitten

By bigger creatures, smaller creatures,

Frostbite, or the backbiting of kin.

Performance is that perilous form

Of dreaming naked without being

Nude, without being vulnerable

In the exact manner emperors

And killers remain vulnerable,

The reminders of which reoccur

Every time a tyrant is murdered

In bath or in bed, the assassins

Flayed, stripped, paraded, drawn and quartered—

We dream we are drawn in close quarters,

Exposed to the artist, the artist

Exposed, all of us doomed to lost clothes.