Andrea Gibson - I Sing the Body Electric, Especially When My Power's Out lyrics

This is my body I have weather vanes
They're especially sensitive to dust
Storms and hurricanes
When I am nervous my teeth chatter
Like a wheel barrel collecting rain
I am rusty when I talk it's the storm in me
The doctor said someday I might
Not be able to walk
It is in my blood like the Iron
My mother is tough as nails
She held herself together the day she
Could no longer carry my niece she said
"Our kneecaps our are prayer-beds
Everyone can walk farther on their kneecaps
Than they can on their feet"

This is my heartbeat
Like yours, it is a hatchet
It can build a house or tear one down

My mouth is a fire escape


The words don't coming out
Cannot care that they're naked
There is something burning in here

When it burns, i hold my own shell to my
Ear listen for the parade when I was seven
The man who played the bagpipes wore a skirt
He was from Scotland so I
Wanted to move there
Wanted my spine to be the
Spine of an unpublished book
My faith, the first and last page
The day my ribcage became monkey bars for
A girl hanging on my every word
They said, 'You are not allowed to love her'
Tried to take me by the throat to
Teach me I was not a boy
I had to unlearn their prison-speak
Refuse to make wishes on the
Star on the sherif's chest
I started wishing on the stars
In the sky instead i said to the sun
Tell me about the Big Bang
The sun said, 'It hurts to become'
I carry that hurt on the tip of my tongue
And whisper 'Bless your heart'
Every chance I get
So my family tree can be sure I have not left
You do not have to leave to arrive
I am learning this slowly
So sometimes, I look in the mirror
And my eyes look like the holes
In the shoes of the shoe-shine man

Some days
My hands are busy on the wrong things
Some days, I call my arms wings
Well my head is in the clouds
It will take me a few more years to learn
That flying is not pushing away the ground
But safety isn't always safe
You can find one in every gun
I am aiming to do better

This, is my body
My exhaustion pipe will never pass inspection
And still my lungs know how to breathe
Like a burning map every time I get lost
Behind the curtain of her hair
Find me by the window
Following my path to that trail
Of blood in the snow
The day I opened my veins
The doctor who stitched me
Up asked me if I did it for attention
For the record, if you have
Ever done anything for attention
This poem is attention
Title it with your name
It will scour the city bridge every time
You stand staring at the river
It never wants to find your body doing
Anything but loving what it loves
Love what you love say 'This is my body
It is no one's but mine’
This is my nervous system, my
Wanting blood, my tongue
Tied up like a ball of Christmas lights
If you put a star on the top of my tree
Make sure it's a star that
Fell make sure it hit
Bottom like a tambourine because all
These words are stories
To the staircase to the top of my lungs where
I sing what hurts and the echo comes back
'Bless your heart bless your holy knee-caps’
They are so smart you are so full of rain
There is so much that is growing
Hallelujah to your weather vanes
Hallelujah to the ache, to the
Pull, to the fall, to the pain
Hallelujah to the grace, and the body
And every cell of us all