Iggy
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The Poem
Iggy
He is in the Farrah pose.You know the one —the feathered hair, the lean, the arms out,the arrangement of a body that knows it is being looked atand has decided that being looked atis not a problem but an opportunity —except it’s Iggy.
Shirtless. On a skateboard. In Nikes.The body that rolled in broken glassand threw itself into crowdsand invented an entire music with its own destruction —in the Farrah pose,and it is completely correct, completely him,completely the argument he has been making since 1969:
the body is not what you think.The gender is not what you think.The beautiful and the savage are not opposites —they are the same thing at a certain velocityand Iggy has always been moving at that velocity.
The Farrah pose
If you saw him on the streetyou might mistake him for someone in trouble.You would be wrong.
You would be looking at one of the greatest live actsin the history of a form invented for the live act —a man who understood the stage was not a platform for the musicbut permission to become the music entirely,to find out what the body iswhen it stops performing being a bodyand starts being the thing underneath.
He is feminine.The Farrah hair. The lean.The specific grace of a manwho never decided grace belonged to one gender and left it there —who took everything available,the masculine fury, the feminine beauty,the skater’s crouch, the fighter’s bravado —and put it all in the same bodyand rode it down the same streetwithout asking anyone’s permission to contain all of it simultaneously.
He is still doing it.A senior citizen on a skateboard in the Farrah posestill making the noise, still shirtless,still moving at the velocitywhere beautiful and savage become the same word —not despite the age but with it,the age just another thing he absorbedthe way he absorbed everything —the crowds, the glass, the decades,the ones who predicted he wouldn’t make it —absorbed, kept going, still going.
Still on the board
Eternally youthful in spirit.Not the youth of the face —the youth of the not caring,the youth of the still going,the youth of the person who looks at the street and sees a skatepark,who looks at the age and sees a numberthat has nothing to do with the velocityat which the spirit is still moving.
IGGY.Four letters. Yellow. Vertical.Taking up exactly the space it needs and not one letter less.Not asking permission to be that large.Not apologizing.Not managed for the comfort of peoplewho prefer their icons to behave like iconsand not like people who are still fully aliveat an age when fully alive is supposed to be a memory.
Still going. Still shirtless. Still in the pose. Still on the board.
The street is still a skatepark.
The velocity is unchanged.