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)