Fears

If we were made of stone we would
walk this Earth unconcerned
of anything, for anybody.

We'd trudge slowly forward
toward achieving our goals
without the slightest bit of
hesitation.

But we're not stone:

we fall while rollerblading and
skin our knees, yelping
for the part of us lost;

we scale a tree, higher and
higher, branch after branch,
ultimately losing our
footing in arrogance, in agony
on the ground, part of us broken;

we lie awake at night,
crying to ourselves (or God,
if we believe) at the uncertainty
of the ground beneath our feet,
our failures.

We have our fears,
of riding bikes,
driving cars,
heights,
spiders, or
the very thing we want
to be part of and cannot--
humanity.

These fears creep up,
unsuspecting, nurse with
a 3-inch needle and syringe,
pulling all the confidence
out of our veins.

No, we are not always
so fragile, rag dolls in the
hand of an overeager child.

(We cut through mountains
with dynamite-- BAM!)

(We stand in front of trucks,
statuesque in solidarity)

(We let freedom ring, from
North to South we let our
words echo, even if our
death is a consequence)

(We dream, and dream,
and dream, scaling mountains
with a flurry of imagination)

And...yet...we...falter,

masking true emotions
in violence, spending days
teary-eyed in bed, struggling
to even let a single word
escape our open mouths.

We are not made of stone
and thus our path undulates
erratically on the most
universal of human emotions:
fear.

In the worst of the times we
are even afraid of our self,
looking in the mirror naked
and exposed, wondering why
a monster is reflected back.

Yet we can overcome these fears.

Unlike stone, our form and ideas
are elastic--

with a little tug, pulling the
courage we suddenly see lit up
in a firefly dance,
we can transcend
these limitations.

We can go anywhere.

Obscurities

You look down at the sidewalk,
perceptive eyes picking minute
details out of an otherwise
indiscriminate haze:

fissures in the smooth surface,
dates inscribed with jagged edges,
little critters crawling on
what must be a vast plane for them.

You look at the sidewalk
and see something more complex.

You bend the rigid metal of the
analytic with what you
envision in a simple glance.

You are not afraid to embrace obscurity.
.
.
.
.
.
I read a book by an author
nobody seems to have heard,
dust(y) jacket in mint condition
though it's been a quarter century.

Only two others have checked it
out, the last a decade ago,
and I can't figure out why:

Yes, the prose is intricate,
even overwrought in spots--
an effect of trying too hard--

but whole passages are somehow
etched into my flesh, consequence
of undaunted beauty and
boundless creativity.

I wonder, as I set the book
down and break to decompress,
if it because the words are
bricks through windows of
complacency that people
turn away, afraid.
.
.
.
.
.
I am sitting in a nursing home
room, staring a woman I've
known my entire life who
now, somehow, seems alien.

She calls me John in a frail
voice, though that's not my name,
and I begin believing this
lack of recognition to be mutual.

Her body is even different:
waif-like, with a gaunt face
overwhelmed by cerulean saucers
that gaze absently in every
direction.

I wonder when she is going to die,
even as we gaze at each other
for a second of
bittersweet understanding.

I want her to live;
of course I want her to live!
Yet I don't want this disease
to push her further into this
grotesque obscurity.
.
.
.
.
.
We look at the little flower,
blooming, as rays of sun
peak through clouds, and
wonder:

why are we destroying life,
so beautiful?

why are we fixated on destruction?

It's seems we don't care about
this blooming anymore, tired
of sitting at canvas and putting
little brushstrokes down to
finish our masterpiece.

We've accomplished so much,
gone so far.

Buildings stretch toward
the heavens in metallic glory.

And yet, we watch this
blooming and it has no
affect on us, same droll look
as we worry about our
dispossession.

The very planet that
cradled our civilizations,
Nature, is slowly falling
out of consciousness, falling,
fast.

Can we survive if we lose it all?

5/15

My bones are
somehow soft.

Formless spectre drifting,
languidly over the Earth.

It all seems so vast and
unmentionable.

My fear, precipitous
and consuming.

I look in the mirror
and see my innards:

large intestine, pancreas,
brain, bowel,

quivering, wondering
what the hell the future holds,

in my arms I imagine
a baby,

(no, not a baby, not right)

in my arms I imagine
a black widow,

I am alone, in a dark
room, but not

dark enough to miss
the red hourglass,

I will die, in this dream
I will die.

And the moments
leading up to it flashback

as the venom, so potent,
floods every inch my body.

Abjection in tattered
clothes as I sip soup,

out of cheap carafe
under the oaks in the park;

still further back as he
leaves me,

sludge spewing from his
mouth as he slams the door;

the death of dear friends,
cloaked in black as I weep,

stream running down
my cheeks;

to what seems a pitiful
moment of exaltation:

a slim volume of poems
published,

"Birth/Death," fragments
of loss and life, a mosaic,

all shattered now, all gone
in this spiral downward,

to the dungeon, hammer
against the birth,

leaving only empty space
and cessation.

All because of 5/15,
5/15, day of reckoning

when I get that letter
in the mail,

postman indifferent to
the fear I feel,

strong emotions of
stagnancy, suspension,

stepping out in summer
sun and body melting

molasses on pavement
as the ants devour you.

5/15
I cannot help but repeat,

I'm a broken record,
walking cliche,

thinking the end of my
life is suddenly upon

me if I do not get a yes.

Reality settles in,
bones hardening

as my form materializes
once again:

5/15 is not an end,
but a beginning,

I want to publish
those poems,

birth and death
of ideas, things, people

alive and well in my
mind,

(I've got a story to tell)

compassion in my
heart as I settle my hands

soft, gentle, against
the tree branch,

this world has not seen
enough of me,

it must quake and falter
and be remade,

in a new image,
without the smoke,

tear down the facades
and expose the harsh

lines of the face, attitudes,
and bend them to your will.

5/15
5/15

It is you who should
be fearful.

Beauty (Through a Lens)

Negation and Queer History

I am posting these comments that I included in my poem "Negation" because I feel they are important in terms of who I am intellectually and may serve to explain not only that poem but many of the other poems I have done previously. I really do want to start a dialogue on this and always welcome comments:


I think that loss and forgetting history figures prominently into queer culture. Older queer men who have lived through AIDS seem to be forgetting major events that have occurred in "queer history." This is nothing involuntary; rather, these men have ignored history because it is painful, because it disrupts any notions of comfort, exposing the full face of the monster lurking in humanity.

These assimilationist politics reflect the larger problem that is occurring among queer youth today. Far from the so-called increasing acceptance of queers based in marriage "equality", I think that the unapologetic gay bashing and bullying demonstrates the ill-effects of this denial of history (which is inspired, in part, by "Feeling Backward" and partly by the piece @harveymilk wrote entitled "Levity and Gravity.")

To deny history only creates psychical uncertainty and distress; history never goes away. The feelings of loss, shame and guilt are not gone in this denial. History is not some dead Truth of past events, but informs the present in so many respects. It's literally alive with each breath we take.

And so I wonder what the full consequences of this denial by an older generation are. Who teaches the kids history? Who mentors them? Is the idea that is pushed "that we are like everyone else" and that our "love is equal" problematic? On a basic level, yes, we do want to be loved and love, but how is that love defined and constrained through a heteronormative matrix? What about those who want to be fluid in who they love? Can anybody love multiple people at the same time? Are you viewed like some zoo animal when you walk down the street holding your lover's hand or when you go in for a kiss?

And so on and so forth. The intersectionality of queer history, loss and erasure; the psyche (and deconstructing theories of psychology which have victimized and dehumanized queer people); LGBT politics nationally and locally; youth; personal experiences as queer man; and academic meditations on gender, class, race, etc. really have informed what appears to be a rather simple piece on the surface.

Negation

He got that flag
many years ago
in the woods of
Bard,

displaying the
rainbow prominently
in his dorm,
self-expression
blossoming.

He has displayed
it since,
through moves,
through tragedy,
when fear and
uncertainty settled
in his body.

But he's taken it
down, just over a
week now,

when I came home
one night it was
gone, replaced by
some minimalist
piece of "art,"

(in quotes because
it lacked soul).

And when I asked
him about this
switch, he replied,
with a disconcerting
smugness,

"I have grown up
now. I have settled
down. That flag is
just a relic."

I looked at him
but said nothing,
in that moment
the connection
we created years
earlier disconnected,
suddenly.

I have grown up now,
I repeated to myself,

I have settled down,
I couldn't let the words
leave me,

the flag is just relic,
I couldn't hold back
the tears.

He's abandoned it all:
uneven fireworks
display of self-discovery,

struggle as his occasional
lisp or soft handshake cost
him a job,

the faces,
voices,
minds
that ceased
to laugh, growl in anger,
or create wonders
because of the monster
lurking in civilization,

and the kids like
him, wiping cum off
hands at this hour,
who deal with that
monster daily.

(I weep harder
as I think about it.)

All lost,
history vanquished
in three short
sentences and
a simple action.

I can't believe he
doesn't realize what
he's done.

I found out he's
not the man I thought
he was, the man
I came to love in
my awkward days.

I am not sure if I
I will leave him,

(I still love him)

but I cannot live
with someone who
has forgotten,
someone who is,
even without knowing,
feeding the monster
that haunts and chases
a people.

I am not asking
him for a parade,
but to remember
we are not the same
and never will be.

As we age, history
doesn't die.

It only grows with
us, breathing and
shifting in our
own experiences and
collectively.

I am asking him
to remember and
put up that flag again.

As I Lay (Dying) In a Holy City of the Imagination

I've made up
my mind already,

morbid thoughts
somehow managing
to escape the grasp
of happiness,

I know where
I want to die.

Only nineteen
and already
imagining the
penultimate breath,

so curious,
with so much life to
live, imagining it
cessation.

Why?

I am not afraid...
or at least I do
not want to be,
to die.

And already I
feel a weight,
an unencumbered darkness,
clawing, chameleon body:

Mother Earth struggling,
to shade herself, yet
melting,
losing form as exhaust
fumes dance sluggishly
around her,

genetic material coded
for disease--
failing hearts, kidneys,
livers, eyes,

and natural decomposition
of mind,
body,
soul,
torn and frayed
by the winds
of the Time.

And yet,

this
declaration is not
dark,

is not mysterious,

does not wear a
grotesque mask,

(I've never felt lighter.)

Perhaps it is because
I lack the eyes of a seer,
composition of a
misanthrope, am no
wraith

that I imagine my
death to be wondrous,

not in design, but
in the moments leading
up.

I want to die
in New Orleans,

a favourite poet
remarked it was
one of the holy cities
of the imagination.

Walking along
uneven sidewalks,
disfigured by the
roots of mighty oaks,
as the sun sets,
illuminating the sky
in royal purples

I cannot miss the
truth in this statement,
and this only a
fragment of a larger
whole

to the grandeur
and horrors,
superimposed
in vast mansions
with shutters you
want to peak in
to houses, in ruins,
you could see from
miles.

I want to die in
the place that has
inspired Capote,
Faulkner, Williams
and the like,

a place where my
own passing disappears

into the mystery
of Vieux Carre in
winter fog,

into the anger
and sadness of
the huddled masses,
hungry outside of
a shelter in Mid-City,

into the imagination
of the past,

into the imagination
of where the world
will go,

and into the imagination,
so holy and profound,
that lets me float freely
above all ills which
plague my body and mind.

I cannot imagine it any
other way.

At the Edge

I sit, at the edge
of civilization, I
gather myself,
taking time to
collect and sort
wild thoughts,

like pieces of paper
into a filing cabinet:
emotions,
artistic imaginings,
sociological theories,
and an ominous
category,
the uncertain.

As I stare in
all directions,
the landscape emerges
in a way it hadn't before,

ground so flat you'd
set a giant marble down
and it wouldn't move
a centimeter,

vast expanses of
water glistening in
sunshine, the Gulf
illuminated in all its
mystery,

and houses, newly built,
teetering over wild
grasses on wooden stilts,
prepared this time for
the perfect storm.

All these images
resonate so profoundly,
any order I had created
evaporated for this blend,
of emotions, academics,
artistry.

I feel it in my body,
my bones, my brain,
my toes--
these reverberations
resonating in an
indescribable way.

All I can say is
that I have been changed,
in a few quick glances
I don't want to leave
this place, even though it
seems so foreign to me.

I close my eyes,
trying to see if I can
untangle this mess
of thoughts and return
to where I was before,
collected, in a comfortable
equilibrium, but
I do not think I can:

though I never expected
it, this place has changed
me forever, made me
anew,

in glancing at this
stark civilization on
the edges of these states,
houses perched high
over ground to avoid
the fury of Mother Nature,

and the vast expanses
of water, reedy grasses,
and it all, this untamed
life,

I've seen how resilient
humanity is, I've seen
how boundaries are
pushed, how people
live a life so unlike my
own,

and the thirst for
exploration, reawakened,
has left me hungry:

for more of a challenge,
for sights and sounds
that I feel are beautiful,

and to write,
like I have no tomorrow.

This place,
as I drive by
in the passenger seat
of the car,
how buildings have been
left in ruins
and how I wish
to piece these fragments
back together,

flood of emotions,
of academics, artistry,

I know there are no
easy answers.

My Voice

I barely have words
anymore, mostly
just sounds, fragments,
of sentences but
never complete--
verb or noun somehow
absent.

What's happened?

This is the most I've
been able to say in
days and already I
feel freer:

language has liberated
me, from when I was
a kindergarten kid
creating simple stories
to college life, when
theorists, facing Darkness,
told me to sling a new
future at the Rooted
even when slinging mud
was easier,

language has consoled me,
taught me not to hate myself
when society uttered
its damnation onto me,
providing an outlet for
all my fears in this dangerous
world.

Yet I have come to
a precipice of despair--
linguistic failure,
intellectual upheaval,
blocked and
stuck writing
gobbledygook.

I desire to see
what I have written
smolder.

Again.
What has happened?
I cannot escape
this question.
I must know
why I can only
seem to write
about my failures.

Sudden onset dumbness?
No.
I write now, I still have
it in me.

Fear? But of what?
I used to cower in corners,
but I've long since
between in all
weather conditions.

Or maybe it just
the uncertainty,
of not knowing my trajectory,
of not knowing what afflicts me
and this maddened
sense builds from it,
frenzy blocking anything
worthwhile, clouding
my vision.

Whatever the case,
let me be clear:

I
want
my
voice
back.

I want it back,
boisterous,
booming,
bending
flexibly to
my environment.

I must be free.
Need to be free.
I want...want to...
live.

The Secret, Told (Part 3)

Just having
woken from my slumber,
the air is already
heavy on my
unequivocal assertion:

I must tell
my secret today,
I must.

Whom will I tell?
How will I say it?
Is it even worth
predicting or
should I just live
And let it happen?

Maybe my biggest
roadblock has been
overthinking,
the situation, the
aftermath, my
future.

Maybe nothing will
change whatsoever
when I utter it?

I'd like to think that
in my heart
nothing will change
when I unchain
this burden, but
what a burden it
has been for all
these years.

How it has made
me see the world
differently, as if
I am staring directly
into a fisheye lens,
margins bending
outward

and the
center being pushed
back, coloured further
by a filter, objects'
essence in
different hues.

I am preparing
myself:

dressing up
in finery not
too fine,

rubbing the mousse
through my
hair for perfect
effect—
but not too perfect,

repeating it
over, and over,
and over, until
I get it just right,
what it I want
to say in that
moment of Truth.

And in this
process I have decided
the who,
the person I will
utter my secret to is
my best friend of
a decade I've
traveled across
continents with
and who I know
will never abandon
me, regardless of
what I have to say.

I step out the house,
styled and over-prepared,
all of this attention to
detail lost, as nervous
anticipation lights neural
pathways in my body,
sending jitters, clammy
skin, unease,

you'd think I'm giving the
most important speech
of my life.

In a way I am.
Not in front of
energized masses
as a dream was
uttered for all to hear
or a graduation speech
cherished forever,

but this is the most
important moment of
my life,

years of struggle
overcome, but not
forgotten, in uttering
a single phrase.

I am almost there,
almost to his house,
modern ecological design
and soft curves,
the little flower
garden
out back with blooming
orchids,
the wall of books
and wooden step stool
I am afraid to stand on—

comfort in the
moments leading
up to the uncomfortable.

I try to prevent my
face from going contorted
and I am winning!
I am getting farther
than I have ever gotten
before on the power
of my will:

I cannot live a lie.
I cannot live in shadow.
I must be free.

An invigorating feeling
and then I see him
sitting outside in
sunshine by the garden,
smiling face, and
I shatter the soft
scene like a brick through
glass,

I must tell you something,
I say in a voice meek and
serious, knowing I need to
save all my strength for
the moment of utterance.

He seems concerned as
I tell him this, the smile
dissolving to a concerned
look as he offers me a sip
of water,
which I take without
hesitation as I feel
cool liquid slide, slowly,
down my throat,
that peculiar "glug" noise
making my lose
nervousness, if for a
second.

I look at him, with
a ferocity that must
be difficult to focus on,
and breathe—
slowly, laboured,
running my hand
through my hair,
careful style
lost to untamed
territory.
Thick silence
Clouds the
Warmth of spring renewal,
as he remains
unwavering in
his gaze.

In this moment,
I know he is a true friend,
dealing with my
insoluble behaviour.

That thought
alone liberates me,
to merely
open my mouth
And let harsh whispers
escape my body:

Listen, I have
something to tell
you that I never
told anybody else.

Almost there,
Almost there,
I tell myself.

It is a secret
which I have
held on to
for so long
because I
have been afraid
to say it.
I have been
ashamed,
worried
it would
forever ruin
whatever
image you
might have
had of me.

(Not so hard,
it's started and
will just flow...)

But I cannot
be silent any
longer. I'm tired
of letting
this boa
constrictor
run wild with
my body.

When I was
a little boy...

You know
how I never
really talk about
my mother or
father…well,
when I was
little, my father
used to molest
me, at night,
I was five or six,
like a young tree
enduring a
thunderstorm,
he would put his
hand in places
that he shouldn't
and my mother knew!
And to this day
I've lived with that
feeling of disgust,
and shame, and guilt,
and I can't
even believe I've
managed to get
this all out.


In the silence,
I know that my secret
has melted,
At least a little,
a certain lightness
reawakening like a phoenix
from the darkness,

maybe I can fly now,
coast on air currents
to lands and experiences
I have never been able to
discover before—
too hesitant, too guarded,

but that dream of
future dissipates
as I am lost in the tenderness
of an embrace,

lost to the sheer
exhaustion of unchaining
this secret,

lost to the present.

The Secret (Part 2)

Why can't I tell my secret?
What am I afraid will
happen if I let slip
whatever it is I have
been hiding?

Dissolution of my self?
No.
I have lived with
this weight for too
long, soul already
transformed.

Dissolution of a
particular image I
present to others?
Yes. The "I"
presented will cease
to exist, foundations
of a life lived
in tatters at the
feet of a new "I."

But what is so bad
about this, I wonder
thinking in what
seems to be an
infinite, impenetrable
pitch.

Living a lie cannot
be a good thing,
living with an ordinary
mask while your
face underneath is
scarred,

while underneath you
possess deep lines
of pain, and eyes
that shimmer with
gained wisdom,

all masked for alabaster
skin and dull eyes,
products of common
culture.

Yet in this accepted
beauty can be comfort:

on days when you
look outside and see spring,
verdant green and
wild birds, locked in ritual
rebirth,

one days when you
step outside and feel
the warmth against flesh,
and melt inside,
unconcerned with the
past, on a path bent
toward a better life.

And then the sunshine
fades, the lush green
lost to mysterious black,
renewal now distant
memory,

arriving at a night
like to-night, when
history and memory
blossom, Venus
Fly Traps devouring
your content.

The masked benefits
lost to your difference
in the most reverberating
ways, lost to your
difference with every
bit of acrid emotion on
tongue and in air.

I should just tell my
secret.

I should just tell it,
Past poets, listen
to me!; maybe if
I utter to the dead
first, letting it escape
my lips will not
seem too hard.

But not now, not
here. Tomorrow,
tomorrow I will tell.

The Secret (Part 1)

It is nighttime
and I feel this
burden weighing
me down,
counterbalance
to crisp air that
livens spirit.

I just want to fly like
nightbirds fly,
smooth and resolute
on air currents,

for a meal,
for exercise,
for no reason
whatsoever,
apparent to
anybody else,
just to glide
and be at peace,
an object with
fewer faces.

But I cannot.

I am stuck,
unable to fly
and yet not rooted
to the Earth,
somehow inorganic,
just walking
erratically on the surface,
gravel giving under my
feet and shoal,
shifting as I step:

perhaps this is what
humanity is after all,
burdened by the
weight of injustices.

My chains?
A secret I know
I must tell
and yet every time
I try to let the words
escape,

free form
butterfly dance,

this contorted
look dominates
my faces, soft
features lost
to a monstrosity,

and I fall silent.

After Fame

All the glory,
all the grandeur:

your name etched
in stone,

in trophies glinting
from too much
polish,

in the roar of
a hundred thousand
teenage fans,

the myth of
immortality.

Your fame never
lives on forever,
all the grandeur
evaporating into
the air for someone
else to capture
later,

and you are
left to stand, naked
in vast open spaces,
alone, and you
must not buckle
at your knees
out of emotional
mix: confusion,
sadness, anger,

this unmistakable
instability in
the wake of
idolization's statue
torn down,

must learn to live
in the fugue,
you must learn to
live it, or you
will falter
like so many
before you,

superficiality cracks
and you only have
memory left,
prepare yourself.

Retribution

A line of cars zips by,
people knowing that
they drive in their
own funeral procession:

Fumes of the exhaust pipe
drift into the air,
carrying pollutants to
linger, listlessly, in
the atmosphere.

Mother Nature intones:
They must pay!
And so, slowly,
temperature rises,
fueling monster storms
that claim countless lives
and melting icecaps,
a sign of impending Deluge
that will claim
countless more.

Even Nature herself suffers--
vibrant coral reefs now
lifeless onyx, once
lively animals, scurrying
with abandon, ready now to
take their penultimate
breaths.

Humanity so imbued in
Nature that Nature must
be remade, uncompromising
wasteland, dissolution
to mystery in transition,
and then the blossoming
of a new aesthetic, rebirth.

Expected process arriving
too early, too soon for a
gradual evolution, as
unconcerned humanity
turns it into retribution.

Can it be halted, or better
yet: reversed, ominous path
restored to former glory?

Yes, though humanity must
remake itself wholly,
not Nature. For only
in new habits can a coexistence
occur.

While I hope,
while I envision myself
in this remade life,
I see the steady
funeral procession;
I see smoke billow
from factory mouths;
I see the haze of light
obscure Nature' nightlights

and I tumble from the
high cliffs of hope into
the icy sea of the future.

Oh, humanity,
Oh, Nature,
reconcile please-- I cry
and then I sink under
the surface. so small
in a vast sea.

The Beginning of the Rest of My Life

The process of applying for colleges has proved to be an enlightening experience. As I am suspended now in a bubble of anticipation and self-doubt, my emotional state is difficult to describe. Not nervous, and yet not hopeful, I feel I am waiting at the most important departure point in my life, headed off for a journey that will carry me for two years to my bachelor's degree and further into academia and the rest of my life. This feeling I struggle to describe reverberates in the core of my body, present when I am alone on Twitter or idling before drifting off to sleep. It is a feeling I remember from when I was in school, and quite frankly, it frightens me. This fright is not imbued in the essence of this feeling, but in the implications it has for me. For I know this feeling has both the capacity to send my ideas and questions through labyrinths, emerging with truths. But it also has the capacity to make me buckle at me knees, fixated in one spot as thoughts swirl around in a murky haze.

How does any of this relate to the process of college applications and admissions? A great deal, given my personal history with college and success (or lack thereof, depending on the benchmarks you use to determine success).

I began my college experience earlier than most, leaving high school with my diploma after my sophomore year to attend Bard College at Simon's Rock, the only college that offers B.A. degrees almost solely for those who skip 1 or 2 years of high school. I began in the summer of 2006 when I was 17 years old, filled with boundless ambition and hope for a future. How could I not be? I had been accepted on a two year, full-tuition merit based scholarship and was getting a chance to make the academic experience that I wanted for the first time in my life. If I was anything other than naive, how would I have transformed myself (and been transformed, for this was both an external and internal process) so completely?

This first moment of transformation came as I took my first gender studies class. My initial interest was in neuroscience, a bold and gutsy path that I knew would take at least 12 years of schooling, but in taking that first gender studies class, I found an intellectual freedom and mystery that I could not find in the sciences. It was in that class that I completed a qualitative research project on formations of gay identity, interviewing four gay men of various ages on experiences coming out and other ideas regarding sexuality. It was an intellectual awakening, demonstrating for me the depth of curiosity that carries my body forward and upright, even as I live in a painful, marginal place. But it was also the first opportunity that I had to academically reflect on my own sexual experiences. I was liberated by that project in a way I hadn't been before, but I was also forever bound to an academic discipline and path I wouldn't realize for another year.

The next semester proved to good smoothly enough as I excelled academically and socially. It was a point of calm and contentment in my life. But the summer of 2007 proved the beginning of an evolution in thought and spurned a series of revelations that sit with my today. Staying on campus with only 20 other people in a town of 10,000 allowed for a lot of time to let thoughts ferment. The first of which was the fact that I had to transfer after the end of the 2007-2008 school year. I would be done with my scholarship. The school, only 40 years old, offered little financial aid. And anyway, I wanted to transfer: the isolation of this place was growing more noticeable as each day came and passed. As I poured everything I had into trying to change the campus climate, few other people responded. This pronounced apathy for a student body population so bright was disconcerting. By the second semester of my sophomore year, I had isolated myself from social activism, and all but a few friends, drifting between phenomenal creative bursts of energy and intellectual detachment.

I thought that Tulane University would be a reawakened, centered in a city that was going through a dramatic rebirth itself. But my expectations were shattered by profound apathy of the student body population and inequities so unreasonable that I didn't know where to begin to change them. While I befriended an active group of feminists, this small group did not justify an overwhelming feeling of alienation and disappointment in seeing a city so magical suffer so much. And so I ended up where I am in rural Louisiana, contemplating my future and applying to a new batch of schools.

Which has gotten me to thinking about the following:

If the schools I am applying to value only my grades as a measure of academic success, then I am not interested in attending those universities. I may not have a distinguished GPA, but if you ask for a letter of recommendation from any professor, they would be willing to provide it. Learning, for me, is so much more than a qualitative measure. It is a life-long process. What I gain from texts and conversations does not end in the classroom; every bit of knowledge becomes a stitch in a larger intellectual tapestry.

My imperfect academic record doesn't reflect my inability to understand materials presented or a lack of effort. Instead it represents the weight that this knowledge holds on my shoulders, along with the the above situations that I described specific to the climate of each university. I would never lose this knowledge and yet I cannot deny its burdens. Fringe knowledge does more than just chip facades off houses. They collapse whole structures, deconstructing the most fundamental conceptions of society. In this annihilation, you want nothing more than to resurrect civilization with your knowledges, queering it (imagine an inversion of the margins to the center).

How can you not struggle when you invest yourself in this mission but never see results?

How can you not struggle when you feel alone and empty, with nothing else but your ideas to cherish?

How can you not struggle when you possess terrible truths while you watch others dance blindly around you?

I have learned that the knowledge I gained is powerful and treasured, but if it is all I have and if it fails to be utilized, then I ultimately have nothing else, save an empty field for me to ruminate in. Which is not to say I should avoid alienation all together: for in these moments of disconnect I have discovered the most about myself. The fury, the abjection, the confusion, that little light of the future-- naked emotions have awoken my Muse unlike any other time in my life. But to linger for long periods exposed causes me to falter, as qualitative methods and personal anecdotes demonstrate.

I do believe that I now know what I want better than I have known before. And yet I wonder if these new schools are just like the old ones: the isolation, the administrative frustration, unfettered apathy. IF they are, how can I temper the alienation and move forward? There are no more do-overs in this college "game." I cannot afford to go to any other schools.

I wonder if perhaps this alienation will be a permanent fixture for the rest of my life, given the knowledges and truths I have gained and treasure. The only way to escape this, it seems, is to look forward. To look forward and see academia and universities as sites of renewed political, social and spiritual transformation. Yes, to contribute to apathy's atrophy is a most difficult task. Culture has evolved in such a way that the material carries more weight in daily lives than the immaterial. But maybe I just need to change my own mindset. This change I seek isn't about me at all, at least not in the long-term. It is about everyone else, the countless mass of marginalized populations long ignored and subjugated to the horrors of human savagery. If I sacrifice my chance at contentment, everyone can benefit from unbridled passion and a firm, steady voice.

Exactly what this change encompasses, or if I will ever end up doing anything worthwhile, remains to be seen. But for now at least, I can only wait, hoping that the colleges and universities I have applied to have seen beyond narrow-minded qualitative methods of college admissions and viewed my personal narrative and recommendations are central to my ability to contribute to the academic and social community. If they have, perhaps this social change I yearn for is already taking shape.

Oh, how I hope so.
Oh, how I hope so.

Our Tree

I sit in the shadow
of a tree that existed
before the American
Revolution, in its trunk
somber realities of a past:

my own self imagining
a noose draped around
one of its sturdy branches,
Executioner ready to send
bodies limp, hanging from
this accessory to murder.

Yes.
This tree is an accessory
to murder, though it lacks
conceptions of Right and
Wrong, it stood as the post
for denigration of a people.

And yet we treasure it,
I treasure it, under its
majestic shadow I wonder
where is the axe clutched
in calloused hands to tear
it down?

There will never be one.
Oh how I feel uneasy about this!

Beautiful knotted branches,
trunk so firmly rooted I cannot
fathom its atrophy;
the promise of history,
unknown and unexpected,
as I scour branches for
glimmers of memory.

And there it is:
beauty is turned upside
down as I tumble, through Time,
the Antebellum emerging from
gravestones, more beauty caked
in layers over lines of savagery:
it is unmistakable.

How can reconcile its elegance
with the facade it exists in?
Should I, even, I wonder as
I continue to unspin thoughts
carefully, thinking this unsettling
feeling a motivator toward
something great.

I stare up again, but cannot
think of an answer, not now,
not here, I want to let
this beauty fade.

Light

Three beams of sunshine
escape through holes in
the woolen sky, falling
slanted, away from the valley
and onto forested mountainsides,
a sign, from whom?
for what purpose?

I wonder as I stand in that valley,
gazing upward at illuminated wilds.
Am I to go there, I ask myself,
playing into my ego, I ask further:
is it a sign for me?

(Must not believe in mythos.
Must not believe in divinity.
Always negate the idea of Fate.)

And yet the scene is otherworldly,
murky sky pierced
by the way of heavens,
a guide toward a future,
divine determination I have
tried to escape entirely,
manifest fully in a single image.

(Other voice presses to speak.
Urgent release of information.
Pressing. Pushing. Pulling
apart phantasms.)

"Merely" a scene of natural beauty,
wholly random,
testament to the Bang
and evolution of everything,
but nothing more.
No god. No divinity.
Period.

Yet this certainty feels uncertain,
core of body shaken
by the lingering scene:

Light illuminates a place
I have never been, as
I dream to unroot myself
from this valley, waving
good-bye to endless facades,
rediscovering myself and
truth(s), Lies left tethered to
lawns-- Rebirth, now!

(Coincidence, there is such a thing.)

But it all feels so meaningless
otherwise. This other explanation--
so whole, mysterious,
orb, swirling with undetermined
gaseous matter, transfixed,

I want that feeling again:
alive again, blood flowing as
the limits of my body shift.

(Go up the mountain! Worry
not for the explanation of things.)

Does it really matter where
my decision came from? I pause,
rummaging through thoughts as
I settle on 'no', wondering why
I haven't escaped this contrived
existence for a lived life.

While I receive no answer,
I think of something else in
the process:
THERE IS NOTHING ELSE
HERE FOR ME!!

I must leave.

(To creativity,
to mystery,
to pain, to rediscovery.)

In an instant, holes of
the woolen sky are filled
and I am set on my
journey, like my future
its circumstances are
unexplained.

Inner Turmoil

The Kid

He writes his first story at eight.
The words trip over each other,
rife with mis(s)pelling
and grammatical (,) errors.
But he captures something
even the most celebrated authors
in history cannot.
Besting Borges,
Cervantes, and Chaucer,
he captures the spirit of youth.

Lacking labyrinth or epic quest,
there is indefinitely
more possibility: in the prose
itself, in the characters
represented, in the landscape,
however familiar it is.

And more,
watch in a year or two;
different placement of
the comma, evolving language,
new inner landscape
destined to germinate like
a newly planted seed.

Why is it we celebrate the developed
but not the developing?
Yes, this child never experienced
the powerful exaltation
arising from abjection
in pitch-black nights, sad shadow
in an expansive plane of existence.

But he sees this darkness
around him and, more importantly,
gets there somehow.

I may not be wise myself.
I possess no accolades collecting
dust on some lofty shelves.
I hold no advanced degree.
And yet I live and listen to everybody's
imperfect masterpieces, willing
to give a kid a place next to Borges,
knowing both epics hold keys to
unlocking mysteries of this untamed
jungle.

In the Shadow of the Gallows (Of Our Family Tree)

Hide and Seek (for self)

I am playing this game alone,
hide and seek--

(slowly)

one one thousand
two one thousand, and on,
thought but not spoken,

nine one thousand...
ready or not, here I come,

each syllable reverberating
with questions:
who am I counting for? and
how is it this 'who' has split from
me? --

linguistic knots, puzzlement
denying smooth flow,
pentameter of past poets gone

(pause, rummaging
through the attic)

puzzlement, again,
private play and rapid growth
of tangled unexpected:

where to look, where to look
I wonder as my hands unmask my
face.

Blues orbs dart, this way, and that,
trying to catch a glinting clue,

but uncertainty is impenetrable
by human sight

(so I linger, what else?)

suspended specimen in fluid filled
mason jar

I want to see it crack, barrier
trickling out and pooling through
hairline fracture,

but who wouldn't want to feel
whole,
or just not missing something?

Limbs don't go slack,
mind doesn't settle for an uncomplicated
picture--
give me Dali and ask for critiques,
(I never settle for the crudely drawn
stick house)--

repeat:
who is it I am looking for?
how did it vanish and when?
and where is it hiding?

Answers, Heavens,
give me answers,
pllllllleassseeeeeeeee,
desperation etched
prominently in each tone,

because soon I might just abandon
this chance at rediscovery
and settle for a "new I,"

I am tired of playing games,
tired of playing games,
tired of games,
ready or not, here I come:

still...
echoing...

(imaginary figments!?
THE REAL?!)

For Inspiration

I speak to you Muse
and ask you to summon
all of yourself for the
most important of tasks.

Temper not anger,
soothe not sadness,
remove not the uncertainty
that leaves footpaths shifting:
these are your wondrous tools.

Look not at the center but at
the place where society
bends and frays,
bends and frays:
in the margins you will find
what you need staring back
at you with wide sunken eyes.

Be not afraid of the gaze
that pierces through flesh.

Be not afraid of the wash
you are throwing yourself into
as you tumble and tumble
through the world.

Be not afraid, hesitant nor complacent
and your mind will light up,
fireworks of thoughts, flowing
from your mouth like a steady steam.

But hurry, for if you wait too
long, all will vanish
and you will have nothing.

Quote from Sylvia Plath, August 1950

I am drawn to this quote over and over again. For some strange reason, it resonates so deeply with me, perhaps because of the intellectual insight (for someone aged 18), for what it foreshadows (suicide, of course), and for what it seems to contrast with later in her life. In any case, here is that passage, no. 7, from pg. 9 of The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962, as edited by Karen V. Kukl:

"With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. The second is life. And when it is gone, it is dead. But you can't start over with a new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It's like quicksand...hopeless from the start. A story, a picture, can renew sensation a little, but not enough, not enough. Nothing is real except present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don't want to die."

Temples (through an open window)

If you don't believe in God
what is your temple? I am asked
as I proclaim, often nimbly,
my religious beliefs.

The world, I say softly,
do you need a single
spot to find solace and peace
of mind, to come together for
common purpose, to find yourself:

what about the willow perched
on the banks of a babbling brook,
contemplative counterbalance
to water chatter,

the square where we all rather
to rally together against injustice,
brusk cries, cascading walls of sound
rushing through a city,

or any number of places that
in thinking about them you are
touched, moved beyond your
rooted state and forced to branch
out.

Beginning Reflection on Religion

The following is something I wrote a while back regarding religion. I am atheist. A few poems that should be coming up soon have to deal with the faith of atheism and some other interesting topics:

"Why should I be force-fed
morality I remember wondering
at 10, not in those exact words
(can one ever remember exact words,
save savants?)
but in the essence,
just 10 and wrestling with a lion,
wanting to find my own morality.

I should not be force-fed,
I exclaimed then,
I should not be force-fed.

Foundations crumbled
in the blink of an eye:
sin abandoned and so too
Christian morality,
the extinguishing of fire
and crumbling of
the ascending stairway."

Seaside

Water lapping at my feet
I am transported to another world, not
of my own creation but of another

lyric(s);
ebb and flow of water,
collect, overbalance, and fall,
collect and collect, that is all.
Woolf in the waves,
wrapped up in evocative language

that speaks to the weary soul I possess,
tired from constant uncertainty
building from the displaced sensation,
nights in bed,
head resting on pillow with sheep remedy,
useless now, the only known
'comfort' from the deluge.

But now, channeling Woolf, I am...
free, in some sense at least,
free to dream of another world,
free to witness soul melt
to prose-poetry, enraptured

And so I lie by the ocean shore,
daytime passing me by,
unabashedly, on its
daily course, dreaming in her
essence:

if this is all life could be,
just think what a content person
I'd be, just think of the ease.

The thought clings to the
water droplets on my feet,
but I notice at once the
first signs of night approaching,
as the sky colours began to deepen--
purples, reds and oranges illuminating
the cloud puffs.
I begin to doubt this statement,

postmodern theory imbued in my cells,
I begin a dangerous process,
deconstruction of self
and the excavation of lies.

Whether or not I have wished it,
daytime peace disintegrates to
jungle adventure, last rays of sun
vanishing to pitch,
"that is all" losing volume to
questions fit for Atlas.

Walking back to our bungalow,
feeling sand in toes, last marker
of lazy day guided by whimsical
imagination, the process of
deconstruction unravels

in my head questions battle
one another for control,
answers emerging from shadows,
only to be shot down by a force
most powerful-- Doubt.
And yet it becomes clear, with each step
in the sand, the ultimate
question to-night is:
Do I just want to dream forever?

Lament from Mount Meru

In shadow of Mount Meru
I lose myself,
all that colours me
washed out
as I remember him:

six months earlier
he stood in this same shadow,
sweat on brow from
tropical air,
fulfilling a wish
in the penultimate scene
of his life,

now examining this
ancient temple in the lush
Cambodian lands,
brilliance and mystery
mimicked in his own life;
or the happy
moments at least--

I break from the image
of him as I try to imagine
what he was thinking
as he stood before this
divine structure

knowing he had only
three months left,
inoperable pancreatic cancer
a deadly yeast quickly
expanding to vital organs,

but I cannot imagine it:
I am not dying too soon.
I am in the prime of
my life, living without
any concern for the Reaper
to whisper, "it's time."

I just stare at the
unfathomable beauty,
unable to pen an adequate
word for what I seen,

I just stare at the
unfathomable beauty
and think how much more
I have left to see.

In an instant, I realise,
maybe my thoughts are
not much different from
his, though motivations
are different:

we all live for great moments
and once we reach the
pinnacle, we wonder what
else is out there,
if there is anything more
beautiful, more wondrous,

there is no way not to look
at Angkor Wat and think
how much further toward
happiness can the soul ascend,

even for the dying,
chants of ages practically
ring out in heavy air.

Snapshot

Staring into the sunset, I find myself:
in the warm hues I rediscover my
conscience, guided by the rhythmic
beating of my heart, thump thump,

and at once I feel lost, swallowed
up by unforgiving landscape,
swampy bayou, humidity laden
air, and worse yet, crushed, a
primrose plant in the hand of a
giant, losing what I once had: my form.

I want it all back,
I howl, wolf-like, like in storybooks,
snout upturned to a sliver of moon.

I WANT IT ALL BACK,
louder this time, angry torrent,
endless stream of mind's dissatisfaction.

No longer able to look at the sun
setting directly on a flat horizon,
I grab my camera and begin capturing
moments in time,

capturing them to remember,
in each viewing,
the day I rediscovered what was lost,

capturing them to remember,
in each viewing, desire
to bend the boundaries of
society like a master of glass work,
towards ethereal beauty.

And then sun sets, and dreams fade,
and all I have are these photographs
to remind me of what I want
but cannot seem to have:

caged bird who desires
migration across continents
to test the limits of his flight.

Rather than becoming inspired,
I just grow more desolate, the weight
of centuries and injustices pushing
at my sides, slowly sucking out all the air,
delirium the next step,

I find myself
closer to the precipice of madness,
sooner to become a 21st century
"Howl," best minds of a generation
lost on some otherworldly tangent.

Where is a way out?
Where is a way out?

Outside cloaked in darkness,
I just look at the photographs again,
but nothing new comes to me,
no resolution, no solace,

sunrise, sunrise, bring something new,
I plead, I moan, until I can no more
and peter out, to silence, to sleep.

Seeing Eye

Need Help in My Upcoming Trip To NYC/Philly

Some weeks ago, I decided to book a plane ticket out of New Orleans to New York from April 30th to May 4th. At that time, I had expected to get a number of hours and make more money at my job at Books-A-Million, being told that the company was doing quite well and that hours would be plentiful. However, the past two weeks have proven to be especially hard for our store, and hours have been cut. As a consequence, I have made less hours than expected and that is going to continue for the conceivable future. I have tried looking around for other jobs to supplement hours, but the (sad) fact is that there simply aren't that many opportunities available, no matter what Governor Bobby Jindal says.

The dilemma arises from the fact that the airfare (which was approximately 200 dollars) is non-refundable. To not go on this trip--which have fashioned not as a vacation but as a personal reawakening and and intellectual rejuvenation--seems to me a waste of the money which I did put down on the trip and seems a bad move for my personal growth and overall happiness over the course of the next few months.

The truth be told is that this trip is necessary for me. I have been living in rural Louisiana since the beginning of January, much to my chagrin. I would have moved to a big city straight out of my not withdrawal from Tulane on the basis of financial issues, but I did not have the resources to do so. When I found that my (now boy)friend was also moving out of New Orleans, I jumped on the opportunity to avoid the Old Man Winter's icy breath. And so I ended up in Houma, Louisiana, a small city of approximately 45,000 that is both deeply Catholic and conservative, filled with Southern hospitality and a quiet sensibility. Most of the people born here never really leave, and so culture seems stagnant, mirroring in many the ways the hot humid weather that lingers for more than half the year.

I thought I would be sticking around for just a few months, but in talking to my boyfriend, it seems he, born in Cuba and a transplant to Southern Louisiana at the age of 6, is more content to stay in smaller town. I agree with him in that respect, as I see he is more focused and diligent than he was in New Orleans, but this rural life is not for me. I have been studying gender and sexuality studies, am interested in environmental and LGBT activism, enjoy theatre, arts, and music, and find no greater passion than discovering new streets and sights by walking around. Houma, Lousiana affords me no such opportunities and I have grown to feel stagnant intellectually, lacking a sense of where I am headed. (And while I am not one for believing in modernist paths forward, favouring a meandering route that I am reminded me as I read any of Virginia Woolf's novels, I must move in some direction.)

That is why this trip is very important for me and I have placed very specific objectives of what I need to do myself:

First, I need connect with new activists on all different fronts, from LGBT folks such as @harveymilk on Twitter, to environmental activists, to radical political activists involved with Students for a Democratic Society. I want to be able to bring an activist project to the Houma area, but I need ideas and inspirations from others who gotten more opportunities to work hard. The hardest part of any project, in my opinion, is getting it started. Being able to do this on a face-to-face basis would speed up the process. Even if it more of an academic project, such as interviewing LGBT individual living in rural Louisiana and using that data for later use, then I can get tips and suggestions on this.

The second objective is to reawaken my muse. Though it is by no means burnt out right now, considering the poem I just wrote today, much of my writing is inspired by the sights and sounds of city life. In immersing myself in these cities, I will find new imagery and imaginings for poetry, expanding my depth of focus and capacity for figurative language. Part of this project entails checking out new art, drama, or cinema to gain a sense of what other artists are doing and build ideas off of them. The Houma area lacks any real organized art community as far as I am concerned.

The third and final objective is to be able to explore some colleges and universities in the NYC/Philly area to get a sense of options I may have for Spring 2010 or Fall 2010. (Fall 2009 options have already passed.) I don't know if I will actually end up at any of these colleges/universities, but want to have options above all else. I am considering CUNY schools like Hunter or Queens College, and places like UPenn and Swarthmore around Philly. It's one thing to research schools online but another entirely to visit and capture the esseence of a place--sight, sound, smell, taste, feeling.

So what can any of you do to help? Perhaps you can contribute a place for me to stay (piece of floor, couch, whatever) for some of the days of my trip, an occasional meal, a spare Metro card or bus fare, anything at all that you see appropriate, even if it is talking to friends and fellow crusaders of all-that-is-noble-and-just in this world. I am aware that this request is a bit unorthodox, but I want to be able to expand the boundaries of being as I put in my most recent poem. This trip will help me to do that.

Let me know what you would be willing to do.

Willow

Everyday I attend
to my willow:
with gentle words,
nurturing, I seek
to preserve its
beauty, finding
it even in the severe
lilt of scaly leaves.

I am not afraid of sadness.

Everyday I attend
to my willow:
not that it needs tending,
tenacious roots
reaching deep into
soil, though
not far from lake,
this bread basket
is rich.

Sadness imbues resolve
into life.

Everyday I attend
to my willow:
as I furiously scribble
on the page, words
somehow come to me,
spongy mind memories
diffusing from code:

I record colours from
the sunsets set in deep
purple and indeterminable
pink,

I record footsteps in time,
soft thuds against pavement
and gravel, in meandering
fashion,

I record, most piercingly,
soul sadness and soul
resolve, abjection present
in every letter, special tint.

Everyday I attend
to my willow:
seeing myself in its image
and wanting something,
cascade of quixotic ideas
as waves lap the shore gently,
and gulls swoop overhead.

I find the limits of sadness
and remake the boundaries of being.

Reflections in Construction

AS I sit by glass,
I notice the inlaid cross
on the apartment building
looming over the
construction scene,
as they tear up something
that didn't need fixing,

or at least something
I didn't see as broken:
sure, cracked pavement
and uneven sidewalks
casting surreal nighttime
shadows,

but such is the essence
of this city,
describe dually as
the city time forgot
and the city that has
been breathing forever--
heavy and laboured
through weather--
but always breathing,

and now they are destroying
it in the name of a
sickening word:
gentrification, acrid on
tongue, gentrification,
I repeat with maddened intensity,

contemporary capitalistic
kitsch, always ending up
looking inauthentic,
Cobblestones!
Cobblestones on Oak St.

It has never been broken,
melting pot of citizens
frequenting local business,
but now they're replacing
this strip of pavement
for broken bricks better
suited for horses.

At what cost? I ask as
functional concerns
dissipate into ethical
considerations.

Why are we spending money
on a street of the city
that seems bustling, day
and night, when other wards
remind me of grotesque
post-apocalyptic imaginings:

symbolic markings for dead
still visible on fronts of collapsed
houses, cracked windows,
untamed grasses reminiscent
of wilds, startling darkness
as sun descends beneath the horizon,

taken wholly to represent
gross injustice that has not
petered after Katrina,
sad fact that the people who
made the city,

the people who struggled
under the weight of slavery
in Quarter houses,
terrible tales of being stuck
in ovens because of indiscretions,

are subjugated once again,
under a different cloak, yes,
but subjugated once again,
left abandoned, out of the city
or in abject conditions,
barely living and nothing is
being done.

Incompetence has
not faltered, broken levees
replaced with fast fading
dreams,
the city that stood forever
seeming more forgotten
with each day.

AS I stare at the scene,
confusion bending to anger
bends once again to sadness,
remembering canvassing
on election day for Obama,
as I was in one of those
apocalyptic neighbourhoods.

Every single person I talked to
was going to vote,
each of them expressed renewed
optimism in the wake of failed policies,
and yet the sight today
reminds me that the national
political arc doesn't necessarily
represent local realities:

governors, mayors, congressmen
are responsible for the welfare
of the people, especially a people
so marred by disaster,
and they have failed,

as they replace usable pavement
with cobblestones, in the
name of gentrification
they demonstrate their commitment
to tourism but not reality.

My heart breaks, staring at the
construction workers who could
be reviving culture rather than
replacing it,

but I must go now.
I no longer belong to the city--
this cannot be my fight--
but please, somebody else
take up arms.

Surreal shadows and
unmatched spirit depend on it.

Listen, I am Feminist Too: A Queer Male Perspective

“I hate to say it, but the images of high school come rushing forward, images of the bigger, stronger guys, roosters in every right, images of who I should have been by social standards. In an instant I scoff at such an image, imagining myself sweating inside some rooster costume, wishing I could just use my brain, that I could just let my voice, steady and effortless, be something I am proud of. But then I realize I am not the rooster anymore; instead I am naked, stark naked, in the hallways, homo tattooed on my stomach, intellectual emblazoned on my arm; and all I can hear are the laughs, uproarious, as a new tattoo appears suddenly on my face, lachrymose, the perfect description for my state of mind.”

These words were part of a story I wrote over the summer. While it was a work of fiction, and the words themselves were an obvious dramatisation of actual events within the story, their core holds an undeniable truth in my own life. I do not write what I do not feel most strongly. I came out as gay at the age of 16 in October of 2005. I was in my second year of high school. For three years prior, I had been engaged in an inner battle, a battle that has shaped the very person I am as I put these words on a page. The quote at the top of the page reflected, for a time at least, the intense self-consciousness I felt over my sexuality. Before I came out, I was worried about other peoples’ responses. I was worried about being rejected, worried about being cast out to sea on some lonely raft, by all people, even those closest to me. But I was also worried about another threat, the threat of the roosters, of violence against me by men because of my proclaimed sexuality.



This fear of rejection and violence did not come without an intense period of reflection. Before I came to define the person that I was as gay, I was involved in a lengthy reflective process over what it meant to be gay. I came to find that gay meant only that I was attracted to other guys, but that it was also composed of a constellation of noticeable gendered behaviours reinforced for at least a century. It became clear that the homosexual was an anatomically male body with a female psyche, an idea developed at the very beginning of the creation of the modern homosexual by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in the late 1800s (Terry 43). While such a distinction is less articulated in society today, the stereotypical images of the gay man as effeminate, characterised by a particular voice, mannerisms, dress, and interests, remain. In this realisation, I began a self-consciousness process of evaluating my own actions and behaviours. What types of clothing was I wearing? What were my mannerisms? Did I fit the stereotypes? I began policing my own behaviours out of fear of being ridiculed or harmed.



Nevertheless, in October 2005 I reached a point where I felt that articulating a gay identity publicly would at least free from a silence that was tearing me up psychologically, allow me to find a community I belonged to. While there were positive effects from coming out, the emotions expressed in the quotation did not disappear in any sense. By coming out, I did not free myself from the fear of rejection or ridicule; if anything, these feelings were intensified. In brandishing myself as homosexual, I made myself an open target of examination and judgment without fully having the courage to articulate what I believed. In this state of fear and concern for myself, my state of mind—lachrymose as I put it in the story—led to the development of my feminist consciousness. The purpose of this essay is thus to define feminism in the traditional sense, utilizing various theorists, and explore a new feminist ideology that may seem more congruous to my own identification as queer and male.



According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, feminism is both a “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes,” and “organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests.” The two key aspects of this definition are “of the sexes” and “women’s rights and interests.” The first is important because in its definition of gender equality, it uses the word sexes, a term which immediately comes to my mind as meaning the “uncomplicated” categories of male and female, thereby limiting access to feminism to those of specific genders. As Riki Wilchins points out in several chapters of GENDERqUEER: voices beyond the sexual binary, anyone who chooses not to identify as male or female have “completely vanished from civil discourse” and have “for political purposes…ceased to exist” (54). This is erasure is further supported in the definition by making women the centre of organised activity, because it fails to acknowledge those who do not identify as women who nonetheless deal with gender inequities on a daily basis.



This definition of feminism is not merely confined to a dictionary; it has pervaded feminist writings since the 1950s. One of the earliest examples of this is Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, a hallmark text of feminism. In it, she boldly challenges male privilege and explores women’s status as Other, lacking any subjectivity of their own. Revolutionary for the time, it clear now the ways in which de Beauvoir’s theory is limited and how it is tied to the dictionary definition of feminism. The first clear tie is de Beauvoir’s reliance on both sexes, whereby men are the oppressors and women are the oppressed. This idea is demonstrated clearly when she states that “he is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other” (44) and that “the division of the sexes is a biological fact” (47). The second is in her heterocentric tilt. Throughout the introductory chapter, she describes heterosexual relationships exclusively and seems unable or unwilling to challenge the basic idea that the feminine is the object of masculine desire and vice versa. In supporting a particular ideology of gendered inequities that places women as the object of feminism, de Beauvoir unwittingly reinscribes a heterosexual matrix and denies voices outside of this model the chance of being heard.



Feminist theory evolved in short order after de Beauvoir, but such a transformation, rather than being wholly positive, brought women as the object of feminism to a new extreme. It is true that lesbian theorists challenged compulsory heterosexuality. Nobody better attacks heterosexual privilege than Adrienne Rich in her essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience.” However, she continues to assert women as objects of feminism, and particularly lesbian women as objects of feminism. Like other theorists of this nature, Rich also emphasizes something called “women-identification,” which does not include merely lesbian sexual interaction but also “women’s passion for women, women’s choice of women as allies, life companions and community” (199). Another theorist, Monique Wittig, in “One is Not Born a Woman,” goes a step further in asserting that “lesbianism provides for the moment the only form in which we [women] can live freely” (20). Thus women remained objects of feminism more strongly than eve; men, by and large a homogeneous category of persons, remained the oppressors; and the genderqueer remained completely silenced, hiding in some closet.



But feminism has come to change. Not overnight, of course, but in time feminist ideology has become different, celebrating a postmodern ideology whereby we are all engaged in acts of gender performance. As Riki Wilchin’s says “gender refers not to something we are but something we do, which, through extended repetition and because of the vigorous suppression of all exceptions, achieves the appearance of a sort of coherent psychic substance” (24). What is important in this is that there is no essential masculine and feminine, only social construction of a heterosexual matrix, a matrix that places masculine in a binary with feminine, where all aspects of masculinity are seen in opposition to femininity. Necessary for this deconstruction of the heterosexual matrix, power relations are also reconceptualised through the theorist Michel Foucault. Rather than previous descriptions of power as held by men over women, power is opened up as “power relations,” relationships between people that are “mobile, reversible, and unstable” (Foucault 292). There is no holding of power in one’s hands. Power is no longer evil. This new model of feminist thought no longer “presumes, fixes, and constrains the very ‘subjects’ that it hopes to represent and liberate” (Butler 148). For once, there is chance of a politics that does not belong to a set of “ready-made subjects” (149). Women are not all victims, men are not all powerful, and the truly transgressive—the genderqueer—may very well have the greatest tools for challenging systems of gender inequities.



I have so far articulated at length a traditional view of feminism and provided a sense of this new feminism, but I must now resituate my self in this theory by talking about my own experience. In the beginning, I described how it was that I came to identify as gay and how my exploration of its meaning involved the realisation that to be gay is to be necessarily implicated in a series of perceived gendered behaviours, whether or not you actually practise them. These gendered behaviours arose from the construction of homosexuality in the late 1800s at a psychical inversion, an effeminate mind with a male body. I come back to this point because I believe that it is the foundation for movement into the world of feminist thought. Sexuality is gendered. I do not agree with other theorists (or those in my daily life) who deny a direct link between sexuality and gender. From its historical creation, the homosexual was entirely gendered. Just as important, these gendered stereotypes have persisted to the present day. Through this process of sexual identification, I came to discover gender inequities and became a feminist.



Let me be clear in saying that it is not merely because of my attraction to other men that I am feminist. Nobody just is a feminist by having an attraction or unexamined identity. To become feminist, one must reflect on hir own behaviours, actions and relationships with others. As once a self-identified gay man, I can say wholeheartedly that many other men who identify as gay should not be considered feminists for a very important reason. The heterosexual matrix I have frequently brought up in this discussion is anchored in a binary that places masculine desire for a feminine object and feminine desire to be an object of masculine desire together. Many (self-identified) men who have sex with men do not lose this heterosexual anchor. It takes only a quick glance on the Internet to discover the pervading top/bottom distinction during sexual acts, where one man’s interest lies only in an active role, the penetration of another typically more passive man. Throughout this process, misogyny is perpetuated and rigid sexual boundaries, heterocentric in nature, are re-inscribed.



What is it then that separates me from other men who have sex with men? I think the first lies in my rejection of rigid definition of my own sexual practices. I practise whatever sexual roles I see fit. I certainly have preferences (as I think any person does), but that does not mean I lack flexibility in what I practise, nor do I vigorously assert a particular sexual role. This action is my re-appropriation of sexual desire. It is itself a feminist act in my mind because it seeks to directly challenge the anchor of the heterosexual matrix. My re-appropriation lies in my belief that desire can indeed be flexible, not defined by an oppositional binary. That is to say, masculine desire does not have to be for a feminine object. What this desire can entail is expanded. But it also is my assertion that the sexual partners we have do not have to be the same (in their roles and desires) that it is also challenging. The heterosexual matrix functions on the belief in a constant and fixed identity; my re-appropriation denies constancy.



The other, perhaps the explanation for the switch of my identification from gay to queer, lies in my support and desire to organise politically with diverse groups of people. This identification—with women, transsexuals, and those who are genderqueer—is at the heart of a new feminist ideology. The function of feminism today is not a movement beyond gender oppression; this belief is unachievable and thoroughly utopian. The function of feminism today is thus adopting “games of strategy” to minimise gender inequities (Foucault 298). True games of strategy can, and ought to, be adopted on the level of individual subversion. For example, an individual who plays with gender such that there is no gender constancy is using subversion to challenge gender inequities and a heterocentric framework at a local level. This means of challenging binaries is effective.



However, individual subversion is not the limit of postmodern feminist ideology. While postmodernism makes problematic categories of essence, I think that it is wrong to attribute postmodernism only to individual action. A new politics of being can be created, but it will not function in the same way as modern liberal identity politics. Instead, it will be based in a dynamic process of continual re-evaluation of actions, goals and aims formed by a diverse coalition of individuals. There will be nobody speaking for a monolithic group, people will express their own stories and combat these gender inequities. Women will no longer be the objects of feminism; men will no longer be the only ones who can perpetuate unequal relationships.



As I have demonstrated, my own personal experiences (and the pain inseparable from them) have led to the development of a feminist ideology. From the very beginning of labelling myself as “gay,” I came to find sexuality as entirely gendered, operating within a framework that established the homosexual as psychically inverted. I fretted over the sweaters I wore, the music I listened to, the glances I took. I was afraid of the laughs, of hearing ‘faggot’ uttered, of being harmed because of this framework. My story, supported by postmodern theorists, demonstrates the ways in which this traditional view of feminism is inadequate. Women and men both have erased genderqueer and transsexual from civil discourse. Women have perpetuated hierarchies related to sexuality, ethnicity and economic background. Men too can face gender inequities. The feminist model I have proposed is one in which power is reconceived outside of subject/object distinction. It is a model that entails individual subversion and dynamic political organisation against a heterosexual matrix by all people who have bore witness to gender inequities. We cannot seek to remove ourselves from the world we live in, but being more open and limitless will allow us to more appropriately challenge gender inequities still achingly visible. In believing that “what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic,” we open up so much possibility for feminism and provide me with a chair at the table (Wilchins 36).

Wild(e)s

Oily rainbow streak,
across the skies of civilization:
nearly invisible
in the whispers of suspicion

to its brilliance today,
since the closet exploded
in 69, sex positions
multiplied in urban space,
Victorian sensibility roiled
in unapologetic pleasure palaces.

Or so the myth goes,
and what a myth it is,
I think, sitting in a rural
Louisiana town, catching
Wifi in a cafe.

Why a myth is the
first question sure to hit
me square in the gut
as I claim the rainbow hasn't been
so smooth (lacking an arc),

but patience, please,
listen to the words that flow
from pen to paper with ease:

it's path did not go from muted
to brilliant across a sky of ages,
and it does not shine now,
though it has had it moments
of radiance in decades disconnected.

A sad fact, yes,
but something better
than deluded sense of things,
not a dismissal of positive
changes but a recognition
of the lengths we still have to go
under a new moniker:
postmodernism in an otherwise
milky indifference.

First thought of support
for the sad fact is simple,

I have sinned,
or so they tell me
on Solemn Sunday,
part of a gray and black mass.

Nietzsche claimed
God dead long ago
but I don't believe him,
listening to words of religious
leaders float hate across
a land that claims
"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

In all too many
nook and crannies
of the country, a single message
sits resiliently:

"God hates fags,"
from the mouth of
a grim reaper
who has no respect
for dead,
uttering damnation as
mourners weep in their own black garb.

Extreme example, yes,
but reflective of the feeling that
lingers under skin and in minds:
aversion to the oily rainbow
as it bends away from expectation.

The second support for
our sad fact,
this bending toward the middle,
postmodernism materializing
in political consciousness,
wondering why the focus
on marriage equality

when young teen boys
wash shame off hands,
having masturbated with
thoughts of sweaty male bodies,
tantalizing stubble against
chins,

when the lesbian woman
cannot listen to the sermon
she wants, foregoing faith
for Sunday cartoons and creamed coffee,

when kids like Lawrence King,
possessing identity
circumflex away from
expectation, are murdered
for nothing more than acting
as they feel comfortable,
reminding us of the Scarecrow
left for dead in Wyoming
a decade earlier,

to the person who sloughs labels--
plethora of possibility in
an opened box--
but is branded, cattle in human form,
as this or that against their
intentions: nomadic and free,

postmodern intensity building,
still more grievances, head
barely bobbing 'bove water,
but necessarily doing so,
soul somehow free from
the weight of deconstruction:

embedded racial issues,
souls who tore down the closet door
in true moment of
rainbow brilliance
now obscured by a snow white sheet,

evident masculine privilege
lost in gender's common conflation
with sexuality,
controlling movements and
lives, male voices silencing
others,

and further unapologetic
misogyny,
(masculine only) men
filled with brazen laughter
at limp-wristed, skinny,
femme "bois"

and Trans-- what is that?
Help me...help me....
help me...echoing from
Bangor to San Diego but given
no response, left to linger
as soul tears itself apart.

All of this as "Masters" of a
this invisible community
sitting in buildings in
big cities contemplating
the next move to gain marriage rights,
tepid in their responses to criticism,
afraid of visibility,

in an instant confirming
what has been said:
the rainbow does not shine today,
save that one day a year
it is acceptable to de-robe
and parade material lust.

And yet, hope has not been lost,
the rainbow never
disappears across blue
sky now dotted with
the purple and pink
hues of puffy cumulus clouds,

Reinvent, Reinvent!
whispers the wind,
Reinvent, reinvent!
But what change?
When? And most importantly:
The result?

Go wild(e), it replies at once,
unfettered, confident,
in tones it says never to be
afraid of the
darkness,
the haze,
the grim,
the opposition expected
to the visibility:

setback is certain,
souls abyss bound
and others still extinguished
by the vehemence of others,

but the price of freedom
has never been greater,
recoloring the rainbow
a more difficult task
than first sending it across the sky,

difficult but important,
daunting, and yet manageable
if remembrance becomes a tool--
the words of past poets,
prize-winning authors--catalysts
for reinvention
and key to the
rapture of the soul,

not just temporary rapture
in sensual touch
or orgasmic shrieks piercing
through otherwise lackluster night,

no, rapture of the soul,
with the body and mind as
weapons, running wild(e)
through the urban alleyways
and winding dirt roads,
running wild(e) with
defiance of everything "natural,"
order disrupted in defense
of the fundamental right to be:

complete fulfillment may
be impossible, but in
recapturing a spirit,
in taking a look deeper
into the realities of a "community,"
unearthing recondite facts and
being unafraid to utter
four simple words:
"this is a lie,"

you once again recolor
the oily rainbow across
the swirling skies of today
and create some chance
of the pursuit of
life, liberty and happiness
to be fulfilled,

listening to the sounds
of Phelps peter to silence,

watching young men
no longer wash shame
off hands after they come
thinking about other guys,

seeing the lesbian woman
utter 'Amen' in confidence
and comfort,

witnessing creation of
a memorial for the
Scarecrows of the ages,
erected in D.C.,

and hearing a response
to the lonely "help me"
that echoes in every state now.

The arc will not be smooth,
the time will not be short,
but it never is:
only in the greatest moments of struggle
is one truly freed.