exes and whys

The programmer I am working with now
knows the landscape and language
I only have the vaguest idea about.
Her algorithmic words she translates
meeting on a plane with my verse 
in an art collaboration we call mad.
On her 13-inch MacAir, 
black on violet Queer. I wonder about
the prompt for such declaration or
the necessity for staking such name.
Or any name for that matter, names
being able and unable to define
at the same time. I understand and not
many familiar names people call
themselves to make more human.
An agender, for instance, refuses any
line, that mark, which maps shapes,
forms, volume, movement, spaces.
The project we are working on
brings abstract spaces into a real.
Something one can hold onto,
participate in. How so many things
I do not fully understand, except,
as the collaboration's theme goes,
we are all children of Eve.

a lesser man

I.
the first time i met d* i almost run out of wind, that kind
when you are caught between exhaling and inhaling
so strong the point of shock.  i thought i saw my mother.

a most curious case and i had to remind myself
i was seeing another.  even though there really
was less mistaking in that smile.  
also, those eyes.  the oval face.

of course, mother is older.  with more wear.  a difference
in contexts and years.  although i could not help thinking
seeing d* i am seeing my mother in times much happier.

a lucky man who won her.  although 
i could not say the same for her.


II.
one of my fears is becoming my father.  i look 
at the mirror and see more and more his face.  
some day i am going to write the whole of it.
but not now.  not yet.


III.
there are a moments of most clarity.  
when i see her and wonder
what she sees in this man--
raised to be stubborn, built as 
less.  who meets her halfway 
only under light of day.

what does it take to be a woman.
a man will never know.
he who is always
lesser beside her.

to make sense of the world,

some resort to words and the trouble (and pains) of definitions: this is
what is, and therefore, that is not.  in other words, this is

the drawing of lines.  the making of differences,  the pointing
of marked territories, otherwise known as concepts.  

or boundaries.  whichever is deemed closest  to or farthest from
the perceived real ("real", of course, being a construct

which no one says, unless...)  Simone says
"One is not born---

but becomes one" which sums the efforts of many who trouble 
(and pain) with definitions:  what we think we know

we may not really know.






*the full text by Simone de Beauvoir is "One is not born a woman, but becomes one."


















 
  

the roles we play

Linda, who said she can't leave New York there's just so much theater there, said I see her when I could, when she's back, there, or here, or wherever it is she is referring to, as home.  

She said why do I not leave this place.  I said why do you return.  I did not ask do you feel like a stranger here?  I do.  Every time I return, the place has something new.  And I get lost:  the streets

have a habit of changing names.  The landmarks have the habit of changing faces.  Old places disappear, always something new.  When I first saw Linda, she was not 

the picture of the name in mind.  She was otherwise; and warm and bubbly; meticulous about each step of the process.  I was not surprised.  Long years in the theater have a way of creeping

itself into the skin.  In a workshop she tells the participants the cliche among us they may not yet know:  we're all actors playing our lives in roles.  Linda says we are friends, we are lovers, we are

wives, we are children, we are mothers.  One time she whispered I am feeling cold: I think I might be sick.  She asked for a pill and I gave her a glass of lukewarm water with it.  She curled herself 

on the couch, like a fetus.  I turned off the lights and closed the door.
What are we when we are alone?  What role do we play in front of the wall?

on questions with no answers

1.

this business with poetry.  almost no wonder why 
poets were sent away from the republic.
all questioning that could, on any day, be meant
to mean subverting  what has been 
a long held belief.  e.g. the world is flat. 


2.

this city is connected to the others by two steel bridges.
mornings and evenings, people fall into long, long, long lines:
all in a hurry to leave at first light
all in a hurry to return by dusk fall.
they all curse under their breaths in between.


3.

in poetry reading class, the students' thoughts
are thick like fabric.  the professor has opened
a window, has let something in: 
postmodernism:  a poem in footnote form;
gender theory:  a poem on the satire of normative roles;
philosophy:  a poem on memory's palimpsestic quality.

the students' thoughts
clutch their bibles, reciting verses.

not one of them has ever seen a firefly.




 

azumi, bodhisattva

Yesterday, I spent nearly an entire day watching two quite-lengthy films adaptations, Azumi (2003) and its sequel, Azumi 2: Death or Love (2005).  Originally, Azumi is a multi-awarded mangga series about the life of a young female assassin in feudal Japan; the films were loose adaptations.  

Should one want to, one can always expound on the concepts and/or ideologies couched in the characters; in some readings, for instance, Azumi herself is thought to be a bodhisattva.  

But what most interest me in these two films is the performativity of gender, especially explicit in the swordfight scenes between Azumi and Bijomaru.  Here is Azumi, dressed not unlike a prince  replete with a blue cape; and Bijomaru, as a delicate lady in white gown, seen most of the time holding and admiring a red rose.
.