Leni Riefenstahl
for T.L.C.

you have to go way up in passion
to find poems

German photographer
wanting to make photographs
of The People of Kau
to show the world

went in among them
married one of the men

though he never knew,
never wore a stitch of clothes,

though he was, to the mind of some
the pole opposite her German culture
racially, otherwise,

she wanted to taste of it
wanted to feast upon it

to enter it like a cave of bats
to be lost in it, in darkness

when she emerged
left man and tribe, she had images
the world had not ever seen

I look for symbols similarly
for otherness to taste, to eat, to drink

want to enter, girl I met recently
discover in her, what she herself
is unaware exists

want to offer her a glass of herself
to quench her thirst
a dish of her own identity
to eat like mutton souse

does my wanting to bathe in her river
frighten her

journeys art takes, often interrupted
subjects uptight, thinking,
is it sex he's after

does he want to stretch my pussy
or my mind

small-minded-place, small-minded people
great-big behinds, little on their minds


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2007
12:24 a.m. 16.12.07