HINGE

APOCRYPHALIA

2012-01-30T11:10:00.000-08:00

Span: this nest built from the remains / remnants of her me fire passion

All that is hazy

She asks will youstay

I trace shadows on the wall instead search for reasons

Midnight: light breaks through window pane moist from recent shower

skin shell shoes shower shed shell and wings

trees les muguets a cave mausoleum blindness earth

secrets of hair

tangle of bridges

All that stay

In the end like noise like fragrance like beauty

Trespass

APOTHEOSIS

2012-01-27T16:02:00.000-08:00

unfettered;

birds,

storm

rise

you
It’s been said,
likesea mist, unbound

But this is yourglory:

You sailed.

Without even knowing: petrelsportend tempests.

Adianoeta: An Ongoing Investigation

2011-12-25T13:57:00.000-08:00

man talk

touch rage

block cause, comfort

spot eye storm

lie

scope : aim

fire!

shape

question

shape

protest

shape

promise

trade kiss twist silence

fight

man : talk : touch : rage : block : cause : comfort : spot : eye : storm : lie : scope : aim : fire : shape : question : protest : promise : trade : kiss : twist : silence : fight

man talk

man touch man

rage, man!

man block, cause comfort

spot: eye storm

man lie

man scope man

aim

fire shape

question shape

protest shape promise

trade, kiss, twist silence.

fight.

ManTalkManTalkTouchTouchRageRageBlockBlockCauseComfortCauseComfortSpotEyeSpotEye

StormLieScopeAimFireShapeShapeFireAimScopeLieStorm

QuestionQuestionProtestTradeProtestTrade

KissTwistSilence

SilenceTwistKiss

FightFight

FightKissTwistSilenceTradeProtestQuestionShapeFireAimScopeLieStormEyeSpotComfort

CauseBlockRageTouchTalkMan

...used to

2011-12-22T23:51:00.000-08:00

it's just a theory...this,

the line that moves

through, perhaps beyond, maybe connect

we wind in between (through)

we hop over (connect)

last year (today)

were

soon

now

then

finger touch star storm chaos

touch throat thrombosis star

storm synapse stone finger

finger star

touch chaos

like we used to

SILENCE

2011-10-10T23:24:00.000-07:00

wrinkle in

space, a

furrow in

time

barrage of light, a

cascade of

matter so

dark, visible

Cooking with Google Translate #2

2011-10-10T23:23:00.000-07:00

From Romanian

Mititei

500 g ground pork

600 g ground beef

1 teaspoon bicarbonate

dried thyme to taste

ground spices (pepper, salt, granulated dried garlic,parsley, hot red pepper) all taste

Preparation

I have done before, a mixture of dried spices (pepper,parsley, thyme, tarragon little) I milled with a coffee machine that uses onlyground vegetables and herbs / leaves (all dry). I multiplied this mixture withsalt fine, extra fine ground pepper, dried garlic granules ... I did not putquantities for by eye and taste ...

So I put the meat into a bowl, I put baking soda andspices mixture (I prepare it again and I'll put it in a recipe later). I beganto knead the flesh and as I put troubled water (about 60 ml).

After about seven minutes of kneading and add water whenmeat is no longer stuck already tomorrow, we covered bowl and put it in therefrigerator for several hours (to be left only half an hour to mingle flavors,but I had nothing to do).

After that I took a plastic bag, the one that is used fordecorated cakes, I cut the biggest mouth (neck size has a 2 l plastic bottles).I filled the bag with meat and I pressed to remove mititei. I arranged nicelyon a tray.

When they were ready and I've covered and left in arefrigerator until the next day when I had planned to picnic lunch (finallywent to the kitchen) ... shame that I was inspired to put grass on the table... mititei ate bread house with a salad of mine, with all collected directly fromthe garden, a rain not see at 3 feet in front of you (and maybe that has beenso good), a good Berici complete menu of cold and desert was a dream ... Moussacake with chocolate and strawberry.

Preparation time: not mentioned

Complexity: low

Cooking with Google Translate #1

2011-10-10T23:20:00.000-07:00

From Tagalog:

GATAFish with Sauce

1 cup shredded fish

2 cups coconut milk

4 tablespoons grated cheese

1 pinch pepper

1 cup rice

3 eggs

1 tablespoon salt

2 teaspoons butter

Stew in a cup of coconut milk fish. Critically analyze thefish then take the spine. Add the butter. In the yolk well beaten eggs, mix acup of coconut milk, rice, shrimp with shredded cheese, salt and pepper. Addwrapping the beaten egg whites carefully. Translate coated with butterhulmahang place in pan with hot water. Enter the ornament of a moderate heat.Drain. After about 30 minutes.

The Lord/The Cat

2011-05-03T14:41:00.000-07:00

First performed as part of "A Night at the Opera with Hosni Mubarak Hosted by Dave Eggers," by the San Francisco Guerrilla Opera Company on February 26, 2011, this piece is a transformation and transcription of some of the sound and video recording from the event.

Paperback is available at: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/a-night-at-the-opera-with-hosni-mubarak-hosted-by-dave-eggers/15157385

---

An Opera's Opera

By Mena Kamel and Laurence Padua

The Lord/The Cat (TENOR)

Solomon (MEZZO-SOPRANO)

Pussy (SOPRANO)

Coco Chasnel (MUTE BASS)

Potato (TENOR)

Buckeyez (BARITONE)

---------------------------------------

ACT 1: At the edge of Tahrir Square of the people’s revolution, The Lord/The Cat, Solomon, Pussy, Coco Chasnel, Potato, and Buckeyez observe a casserole of “staggering genius.”

The Lord/The Cat (intones): Upon the weekend he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.

Pussy: Cats will self-recharge. This takes twenty hours in a twenty-four hour cycle.

Solomon (glancing at Coco, nose up in the air): Revolutionary, for the time, borrowing elements of men’s wear and emphasizing comfort over the constraints of then-popular fashion. She “helped” women say good-bye to the days of corsets and other confining garments.

The Lord/The Cat: The god of glory and the god of thunders. The lord is…(Aggravated while hurtling towards pussy who interrupts)

Pussy (yelling): Bringing your new kitten home! Now that the exciting moment has arrived…

The Lord/The Cat: The chances are high…

Potato (visibly shaken, whimpers) But the water…

The Lord/The Cat: The voice of the lord is powerful, the voice of the lord is majesty

Pussy (unfazed)…for both you and your kitten, be aware though, that they may be frightened when you bring hir home, so make sure hir’s safe and secure with plenty of human company until hir has adjusted to hir new surroundings

Potato (crying, now): Many waters…

The Lord/The Cat: The voice of the lord is powerful

Buckeyez (singing to himself): Letters of Lebanon and glory

Pussy (ignoring everyone else): So make sure ze feels safe and secure

The Lord/The Cat: He also makes them shaped like calves

Pussy: ….it is important that you use a carrier to transport your new kitten

The Lord/The Cat (ominously): The voice of the lord expires

Pussy: …as he could easily be frightened by road (glancing at The Lord/The Cat) traffic.

Buckeyez (to himself): Divine a place of fire

Pussy and The Lord/The Cat: (Shouting in unison): DON’T TRY/THE LORD!

The Lord/The Cat: The voice of the lord shapes the wilderness

Buckeyez (still singing to himself): There’s a temple that everybody says

Pussy becomes The Lord/The Cat, drags mute Coco out into the wilderness. The others follow. Pussy/The Lord/The Cat, to Coco: Awaken under the Apple Tree…and here you will sit-- waiting in your own marinating filth

ACT 2: In the wilderness, beyond mass media

Pussy/The Lord/The Cat: I…am a wall

Buckeyez (expressively singing): We will display upon her a battlement of…

Coco Chasnel (apparently, not mute): You can’t drive! And my sack of suckies and my stacks of paper are weighing heavy on my shoulders!

Pussy/The Lord/The Cat: Yeah, but Solomon had a vineyard, doi! Now shut up!

(with one wave of hir hand, Coco is mute again)

ACT 3: Still in the wilderness

(Temperatures rise, and the heat becomes unbearable. Pussy/The Lord/The Cat, removes hir shawl from hir head and fans hirself with hir palms)

Pussy/The Lord/The Cat: gotta hold you

Buckeyez (screaming): bring to a boil and let stand a minute or two, serve with warm milk or orange juice, bring pear juice to a boil in a sauce pan, stir in rolled oats and raisins and cook until thickened. Don’t forget, bring the potatoes to a boil

Potato (shaking): waaaaaaaater

Buckeyez (softly): covered and cooked for twenty or thirty minutes, slabs of butter, (whispers) potatoes

Act 4: Back in Tahrir Square.

Potato and Buckeyez address Pussy/The Lord/The Cat: Lord, who shall abide in thy holy tabernacle?

(The ARIA) Pussy/The Lord/The Cat: He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart. He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbor, nor taketh up a reproach against his hobbies, such as bird watching or studying tropical fish. If you care properly for your tabernacle, it will give you years of loyal service where she got the dress, “My fortune is built on that old jersey that I’d put on because it was cold in Deauville.”

The unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion…that heralds your arrival and prolongs your departure…I am weary of all my groaning. All the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears! And just as their human counterparts, avoid feeding the following foods to your 4 boneless chicken breasts, skinned and ¾ tablespoon seasoned salt: avocado, chocolate, coffee, macadamia nuts, raisins, garlic, 6 slices peppered bacon, 2 tablespoons parsley flakes and 1 – 1 ½ tablespoons vegetable oil. Cover the breast with the cooked bacon."

Origins Obscura, Scene (xxl)

2011-02-01T00:34:00.000-08:00

Next scene: Hyper-connectivities: flashing brilliantly on screens, monitors: Native American Mounds at the Mississippi Delta/Banaue Rice Terraces/Patagonian steppes/Southern African jungles).

Away, away. Over here, psst, hey, over here...or was it there? Where are we anyway?

(Stage shifts. Audience views scene from the perspective of a bird perched on a branch of the tallest tree ever measured—eucalyptus leaves float down on the audience.)

Where have they gone?

Away.

I know, away, but where?

Far from here. I have a feeling we'll never see them again. Never touch them again.

(Audience hears a moaning in the background.)

Many voices:

Those are their mothers

Their fathers, their brothers, their children, their children.

(A beat in time, points to the ground)

Those are their footsteps.

(Turns on heels and points to the ground)

Those are the grooves left behind by their bodies dragged on the sand.

(Turns and points).

Those spaces in between are where they were lifted up.

(Turns and points).

…and those must be their tears washing up on the shore.

(Turning and pointing...)

That's where they... (Almost breathless)

That’s where…(Gasping for air)

That’s…(By now spinning)

Those are their...(Spinning faster)

(The rest of the individuals on stage spin, pick up the chorus. After each spin, next line becomes louder:

That’s where they…

Snagged

That’s where they…

Lifted

That’s where they…

That’s their…

Stage lights “shadow” the spinning bodies on stage. No disco ball can be used).

(Silence. All we hear are fabrics of costumes, as individuals on stage spin. After a few minutes, they all fall down. Hard.)

in here, the dark

2011-01-31T22:33:00.000-08:00

in here the dark

not that of night

or of desire

not even of space or gloom…

but that of slant

of measure, of tilt

of lines, of slit

of curves that lie between

unhands, in here

the dark

the lay

the high

the path

the way

corniche…

in here

the dark

that wave

and slip

that flow

and slide

that grip

that cloy?

it beckons, in here

the dark

Origins Obscura, Scene xx

2011-01-25T00:33:00.000-08:00

(Blackout, then the hysperscreen lights up: A blank page, slowly shifting to a midnight blue screen, which slowly fades into a navy blue, which slowly shifts into two, lighter hues of blue. The center of the screen is divided by a horizon. At the center is a spotlight, shining directly at the audience. Then all lights black out, except for one spotlight on a body lying on center stage.)

After the taking. Asea. Away we go!

I am pinioned. A leaf chafer on velvet, while I watch you soar, you with 10 foot wings that span the breadth of the ocean, the living legacies of primordial tempests; you whose wings beat to the rhythms of myriad ancestors’ songs, revising my visions of what's possible, even now, as I lay here at the bottom of this ocean vessel. I want so much to soar, too, to share that space with you. Around me, I see only landlocked brown bodies. We are lost. We are not of the ocean. There are no familiar marks to differentiate the sky, even from itself. Nothing to blur the horizon, except for itself. I am drowning here, on top of the sea.

Screen shows plump puffins, sturdy erns, comical pelicans, awkward blue-footed boobies on cliffs, on beaches, on land. Abruptly, images are replaced by an image of one albatross. Albatross sails on, not stopping on land for a year, barely flapping its wings, riding warm ocean currents. Albatross looks down at the ship below. (Perspective shifts…)

(Before the first births at the fair. We see three figures sitting around another who is clearly pregnant. The first of the sitting individuals rises and touches the hand of the pregnant person. On the hyperscreens, we see transparent images of babies, arms reaching out to one another.)

Which witch is which?

The First:

These will be tales they hold in their hands. Now, at this time of birth, gather silk worms and place them in their palms, curl fingers. Make fists. Bandage them shut for three days. Each worm, a weaver of stories, each palm print and imprint, tales of movement, perhaps of dance, or tears, perhaps sorrow, or a shimmering star at the edge of the universe that can never be touched, even with eyes open as wide as imagination.

The Second:

Into their skins, burrow! Under their skins, spin! Each line names a place, a time, a person. Each line names a name, places a place. Into their skin. Spin!

The Third:

This line tells the beginning. This one marks the end.

All:

Each one circles around, a snake eating its tail.

The First:

But this line is still being told. Look closely. See the silk worm spinning its thread. At times it struggles against callouses, bruises, bone, but it continues. Today it swims through blood not knowing where it’s headed. It only knows it must continue.

(The first becomes the second, the second, the third, the third morphs into the first, again and again, until the changes become so rapid that the audience cannot distinguish one from the other. While the morphing happens to these three, the “ghost” babies speak).

Ghost Baby 1:

I hunger. Salamander eyes to burn a path and cicada wings to clear the sky for words to form in my throat.

Ghost Baby 2:

I freeze. Night’s chill air surrounds me.

Ghost Baby 3:

I wait. Clouds above still...silent waiting for release.

All babies:

When the downpour comes, we become like locusts devouring the pages of time itself, become chameleon changelings altering what’s been said, what’s been written, what is believed.

We become like wind issuing warnings of storms yet to land.

We become storytellers.

The Three and The Babies (Together, as one voice):

The wind chills locust, freezes chameleon wings; clouds burn swathes of pages, salamanders croon lullabies to the sea. Histories turn. Time renamed. Survival, recast. Again.

(BLACK OUT)

Studies

2010-12-12T10:50:00.000-08:00

Be still

2010-12-12T03:33:00.000-08:00

Take time
let it
       cascade
                    through you

It's temporary, this
let someone's breath inside you

Once you've folded the edges
fold them again

It's almost like saying
nothing, saying everything

It's almost like nothing
in the everything.

We slide through
       We slip over
             We become like hair
                    blown
                            unruly
                                    undefined
                                                  like a bad day.

It's almost like this,
like everyday

with you.

I need you to stop
/be present/
*be present*
be here
.

A hair,
An idea
u
rain
ium

On sleepless nights, Azra thinks that...

2010-12-11T04:09:00.000-08:00

...it hasn't been about this
(or him) for a long time now

this being…

the age of reason (his) beauty
the age of change

the seasons' failings

for so long, it hasn't been about veneers:

-- but (he) always digresses

then they...

...get lost in the disruptions

...the lava flow of what ifs and what could still be.

(Then I insert myself and...

...I don't really know how to answer your questions anymore, my love(s)).

The sun shines --

relentless ¡

Azra's Terrai/s (Asylums )

2010-12-11T01:39:00.000-08:00

I'm interpreting this loosely for you, Azra.
We are in the in-betweens
marshland/the mountain range
bricked borders
notions/nations
(still can't understand the idea of land owned)

[Maybe the reason Azra feels lost is that there has not been enough of his

dead to replenish or sustain or give life to -- the living and

those to be born, here.]

Perhaps the reason is...the Buddha and Jesus Christ and Mohammad and
Krishna and Bathala and Pele and Oshun and Odin and Isis and Kronus
and Grandmother Spider and yes, even Xena, died and died and died and
no one was around to see the terror transition out of their eyes

untitled

2010-12-03T02:27:00.000-08:00

Here
Cisco sinks

It's not water
deeper

Still.
into brine

Still.
and breaths

Be still.
still.

ORIGINS OBSCURA: Excerpt #2

2010-11-14T02:23:00.000-08:00

In the present, discourse on belonging. On leaving. In 1904, tribes from around the globe were abducted from their lands and put on display in the largest “anthropological exhibit” (ever, or since).

(In the following exchange, there should be no pauses in between each line. As soon as the last letter in each sentence is spoken, the next line should follow.)

D: I couldn’t speak.

E: Muteness sometimes becomes you.

D: Neither verse nor prose. No rhythm. No movement. No content, no rhyme.

E: More silences should filter often through you.

D: It’s been said at the time of my birth, a million leaf chafers inhaled at the same time and sucked the breath out of my father, who at the time was busy swatting at flies.

E: Stifling births produce raucous sounds and unbearable witnesses to life.

D: Flies that walked, but did not fly. Flies that intimidated by sheer numbers. A tintinnabulating ocean that rolled as echoes in frogs’ ears.

E: Such an exercise in utility, this gathering in sheer numbers.

D: So, I couldn’t speak.

E: The gatherings happened by the numbers…the harvesting happened by the numbers. Now, here we are in this alien land, surrounded by all this familiarity. But, if you were to trace the origins of this river, there’d be no mountain wind whispering through insect wings, no toads shivering on river rocks.

D: Softly, my father died under the weight of all those wingless flies; couldn’t even speak through his broken breathing.

(One turns clockwise, the other counterclockwise. They end up face to face.)

E: So, how did we get here?

D: Does it really matter? I don’t want to trace a mountain wind or a river’s song. I want to rage, tear down the sky, let azure flow as redemption.

(BLACK OUT)

Next scene: Hyper-(LINKS): flashing brilliantly/quickly on screens on monitors: Native American Mounds at the Mississippi Delta/Banaue Rice Terraces/Patagonian steppes/Southern African jungles).

Asylums (Cisco)

2010-11-02T23:31:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seriously considered taking your own life? Then you know.

You know that that desire is never about loneliness, that it is never rooted in the wanting to be alone. Being truly alone, and the silences implicit in the word would be so much more comforting than that which finally would drive you to swallow pills and never have to wake up, or to truly slice through your own skin with the sharpest blade you have, to cut through tendons, arteries, and veins and to feel the warm fluids of your body drain, slowly. You know that the thing that would drive you to dive deep into the ocean and breathe in and swallow, filling your lungs and your stomach with briny water, to surrender and finally be weightless, is to realize, finally, that you could never be liberated from the constant murmuring in your ears, or in your head. When you finally realize that you can never be truly alone, especially when you know that you should be alone. That is what finally breaks people into taking their lives…the knowledge that the voices will always remain.

I know what you’re thinking. But no, I’m not at that point. Yet. Or again. But I understand. People who are afraid of being alone have never been truly alone; they have never allowed themselves to fight against the constant barrage of susurrations, of invisible, mechanical crickets, of the pleas and whispers in their ears from who knows who or what…could they be ancestors? Future selves? Desires? Fears? Or are they just the clicking of the brain, its need to access its own grooves…I have fought for true silence. I have even managed to win. And it was joyous.

I floated in darkness.

I swallowed the moon.

Then I found all the beauty I was meant to find in my life.

Asylums (Cisco)

2010-11-02T23:03:00.000-07:00

For a long time, it seems like I’m talking to myself. He does not say anything back, but finally he just pulls me even closer and nuzzles against the back of my neck. He’s jealous, I can feel it in the air. But there’s not much I can do about it. Right now, I have to take my long drive across that bridge. We climb down, and I take him back to the club.

Crossing the Bay Bridge, as the horizon changes from shades of grays and blues to a mélange of reds and yellows, is a melancholy undertaking. Across the bay, the fog lies still, a heavy burden on the bridge’s sagging middle. I have tried to see the beauty of dawn; tried to appreciate the rising sun. But I’ve come to realize that the clarity of the day is an illusion. We just don’t have vision enough to truly see. As such, I don’t want to exist in the now. Nor do I want to live in the light. And most of all, I do not want the daily routine of routines. I don’t have strength enough to hold myself up, much less someone else. At times like this, I feel like a relic, the missing digit, a lost translation. At least, the voices that had started to stir earlier, have started to fade again, and I can drive without internal chatter. But, even though I’m freed from their hold, the day holds nothing much for me look forward to. And at times like this, just before the dawn breaks, when I know that I need to start the trek across the Bay Bridge, and at other times when Sergio’s body warms mine, and still at other times when the thoughts of Azra’s loneliness break through even the most insistent of voices, I search for that part of myself I hide in the mirror. But it’s a will-o-the-wisp. It’s a puff of smoke. It’s a tangible, but ungraspable object, and even the weight of the search cannot let my mirror self break through. At times like this, just before the dawn breaks, I need something more powerful than my mirror self.

Asylums (Cisco)

2010-10-15T02:12:00.000-07:00

The rain. It's different this time. Each droplet is a prism. Each droplet holds light. The small rainbows illuminate the river frogs singing to the rain. They line up along the river, a phalanx of miniature green soldiers, heads tilted up towards the sky, mouths agape. And neither the river snakes nor the rain owls frighten them. The river frogs stare down all intruders, all predators.

What's changed? He wonders, watching the tiny, green, fearless line advancing. He stomps his feet and waves his arms. The frogs continue to advance, walking, not hopping, legs rising and falling in unison, a phalanx of miniature emotionless soldiers. Suddenly, they rear back as a unit, then start quickly leap-frogging backwards, fear evident in their eyes. He looks behind him, but sees nothing. The frogs continue jumping back, looking panicked, but remaining heroically in formation. He moves forward. They jump back. After a while, he realizes that they are not trying to run away from him. They are merely trying to draw him to follow them. The realization has come too late as he loses his balance on a river stone, falls face first and hits his head on a rock. As mud and water rush into his lungs, he feels hundreds of frog leg pads jumping up and down his back, making sure he does not get back up again.

Asylums (Cisco)

2010-10-13T02:35:00.000-07:00

He wakes up to the sound of steel striking steel. He lifts his head looking around trying to locate the source of the sound. All he can see is a green canopy that shows nothing but broken glimpses of blue sky above. He realizes he’s lying on a branch of a full-grown avocado tree. When he looks down, he sees a small outhouse and a pigpen. His view of the bamboo house, however, built on wood stilts that he knows is standing just to the left, flushed against a small hill, is blocked. From his vantage point, he also does not have a view of the smaller building that houses the kitchen. He does see white smoke curling up above his perch. Slowly, so he wouldn’t fall, he tries to maneuver closer to the tree’s main trunk, knowing that all he needed to do was climb down the tree, and he’d be home again.

Next time he wakes up, it’s to the sounds of glass breaking. Window panes make noticeable sounds when they break, like the screech of a hawk. The sound grates against his tympanic membranes. He’s a river frog sitting by the flowing water, screaming in pain. Then he’s a flamingo braving sulphur beds. As the sun beats down against his back, he realizes that his protective feathers have changed into crocodile skin, and he’s back at the river bank, mouth wide open, watching farmers in the rice paddies, some are stooped over planting seedlings, others are fanning themselves. It must be hot, but he doesn’t feel the sun’s rays. The farmers quiver, and suddenly they’re below him, and he feels his hummingbird wings beating, pushing down cool air, creating a blizzard. He falls towards water and becomes a giant snake; his powerful muscles push out, creating mini-tidal waves that lap over the dikes separating rice fields. A blinding light strikes him from above and the pain in his back—like a hot block of coal—intensifies. It’s waiting to be born, this searing heat. He opens his mouth to scream, but all he can manage is an alien bleating.

He wakes up again, this time, to Cecilia Bartoli coloring the air with her vibrato. He also hears the constant hum of some unidentifiable machinery. He hears forced air just above his head. Both his arms hurt, feeling as if they’ve been stung by a colony of bees.

Then he awakens in darkness.

“I’m blind,” he thinks to himself. But as his eyes adjust, he sees light in front of him, but it’s dim and undefined, especially at the edges. He tries to focus, but his eyes do not seem to be working properly. He wishes he knew what he was doing here, propped up against a metal wall, surrounded by trash bags. "I wish I knew what lay beyond the stink of rotting garbage.” The odor reminds him of the smell of the carcass of dogs he and his sisters once found; a humid, fetid smell that clings to the back of the throat that cannot be washed away.

He awakens under water. He thinks he’s drowning. He can’t breathe through the torrent over his face. He can’t breathe because of the pressure on his chest and constricted muscles binding his lungs. His throat has closed up. A thousand butterflies have lodged themselves in his nasal passages.

When he wakes up this time, he’s wandering the desert. The dry heat makes his skin crack, makes it feel like the skin of a Gila monster. The sand on his body makes every crevice itch. He scratches his belly, and the skin flakes off. He’s leaving a trail for scavengers to follow. The sun shines, relentlessly. He climbs up on a sand dune and scans the panorama. He’s searching for the beauty of dusk, for the ease that’s supposed to come with the end of day.

He wakes up to a voice whispering.

Finally, he wakes up to a forest of noise. Startled from his avocado tree perch, he loses grip and starts to fall. His arms reach out, trying to grab on, but he can’t hold onto anything more substantial than a twig. Strangely, he does not feel panicked. Strangely, even though there are only a few yards between him and the ground, he’s calm. He knows that he would bounce back up. As he runs out of twigs, branches, leaves and options, the world around him starts to thin. Even his outstretched hands are becoming transparent. He’s fading. But, just as his consciousness also fades away, he sees in the palm of his hand, a glimmer, almost like burning coal.

TO FIRE HIS SOUL

2007-04-16T22:43:00.000-07:00

In the beginning was the breath. A low rumble that started from just below his navel and tingled a warmth and familiarity through my body. It seemed as if his breath had been my own, forever. He was so much more than love -- so full of colors that mirrored words and stained promises and echoes. But over our spot of vast expanse, ferrous rain fell one by one by the thousands, 'til the fires that lit his soul were extinguished, became unrecognizable. How must it feel to shed skin, 'til nothing's left but sore bones?

His tears washed the ash off the ground and he swore he could do no more. He needed an arm, a shoulder, a chest, a wisp of skin to make him feel as real and solid as the concrete that were once sidewalks. They used be littered with the white and pink flakes of cherry blossoms and once reverberated with thousands of footsteps. But that was before the bombs fell; that was before his world became incomprehensible. Death, dying, funeral drums--he's used to them--but never so much at one time. The eradication of his people had signaled a fracture in the clemency of nature, signaled an inimitable loathing radiating from a higher power.

It was the glory of the coming of a fallen god, Mephistopheles in a soldier's guise; a soldier in defence of a border. In the eyes of a patriot, the equation of war runs so: "This body+this nation=my soul." But I wonder, has he ever tried to see beyond the colors of the fabrics that clothe someone's body? Has he ever tried to understand the stance of a killer, or his own?

I wonder if there is evil incarnate? Mass graves will make you believe in a higher power, but not necessarily a forgiving one.

TBC...

REVELATIONS

2007-04-05T00:19:00.000-07:00

When
was the last time you saw

something you'd describe
as beautiful? He asked,

as he puffed his cheeks,
looked up at the sky,

started counting clouds
passing by.

He then picked at his toes
then at the grass (Japanese, not crab).

Finally, he just stared straight ahead.
We all have different ways of recalling.

Faces contort, hands smooth out hair,
fingers play air instruments --

Signs of nervousness,
of being revealed.

I
could talk about sunrises

over Kilauea
over Kilimanjaro

over any mountain.
Silhouettes take shape,

breathe color,
finally burn with dew

as the sun trudges
over a ridge,

a crag, between ravines
inventing outlines

against the roundness
of the earth.

I
could expound on the delicacy of a hamstring

poised.
I held my breath, instead.

After your passing

2007-04-04T13:41:00.000-07:00

my RESISTANCE drips

april rain on prairie grass
(as muted and gray as i imagine horizonless winters)
not like monsoon water
aching to be free from the obstacles of land
rushing to return to peace

to the salt of its beginnings

IN THE LAST CENTURY (After Carolyn Forche)

2007-02-15T09:53:00.000-08:00

THE FOLLOWING IS A COMMUNITY POEM. I WELCOME OTHER'S CONTRIBUTIONS. POST YOUR CONTRIBUTION IN THE COMMENTS. POEM WILL BE UPDATED WITH YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS FROM TIME TO TIME...I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO EDIT YOUR LINE(S) =)

In the last century, as in the previous, as in the one before that
they died and no one was around to see the terror
in their eyes

Sous le ciel, sur la terre

The wanting to be found - to belong, runs deeper
than the wanting itself

In the last century, as in the previous, and the one before that

Ants marched through discarded trash
Armies swarmed through villages, remnants of ancient civilizations (oh, Mesopotamia, Khmer, Bengal, Sagada, oh land of eternal spring)

Black dots appeared on the face of village elders
Borders were drawn, again
Borders were drawn...yet again
A boy woke up...left the world
Brown skin became sin
Butterflies struggled against the wind

A child's laughter escaped the killing fields
Christian saints wailed
Cliffs fell, mountains grew, families drifted without nets or support

Dancers fell...their sisters picked them up
Destruction became normal

A family seated at supper argued about war, the daughter screened her face against the glare of her father's stare, the mother scraped her plate loudly. Slowly, their gatherings became less frequent
Fear of the dark destroyed the beauty of indigo dawn
Flags became more important than families

Geese continued to migrate south
Gold became more precious than coconuts
Greed surpassed all sin (killings continued)

He who ruled became she who died and
He (who was a she) grew wings and fluttered out a window. The critics applauded the "beauty," the "irony," the "art"
Hegemons ruled from beyond the oceans
Heroism became acceptable
His companion for ten years, a rubber tree plant

I live still, just to live

Living became something to bear

A man walked through a labyrinth, lost his family, damned god and wept
Megaliths stood watching the sea, megalomaniacs standing timeless, eternal watchers of conquest
Monuments to war heroes crumbled
Monuments to war criminals eroded
Monuments to war became testaments to war

Our bodies became grammatical excercises at the hands of media
The orbit of the earth shimmered

A pregnant mare gave birth to a silver foal

Rhetoric replaced reason

Space became time

Weavers clicked in time with cicadas

MANIFESTO (Post Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)

2007-02-14T13:25:00.000-08:00

What is this I'm trying to understand?
Is their a philosophy for the uninitiated,
a politics for the unwashed,
a living for the hidden?

What is the language of your tongue,
as it glides through the sticky
quagmire trying to be
unbound
unstuck
unencumbered?

I'm sick of tyring to understand something I just can't seem to grasp.
I'm floating somewhere in the in-betweens of
les langues et les paroles --
Concepts, abstractions, elisions
diphthongs, give me something concrete to bite on.

I only wanted to realize your words are actually tied to your tongue
or to your soul
not as waterless fonts
or wingless birds,
needing to fly free
just to be free --

The freedom is never enough
when you don't know what you're free from.
Shackles hold tight through the years
and the illusions
and the complacence.

But I must give you this,
there is something to be said
for wanting to remain hidden
away from prying eyes that seek only
to see you as though you
were a strange, eerie, other-wordly some
thing

Or wanting to claw back,
at the same eyes that see you
unknowing.

And I can understand your needs
and I don't want to hold so tight
that the easy breathing gives way to rasps.

But tell me, how do I decipher
the enigma laid out in front of my feet,
or the tightly bound tourniquet around my heart?

How do I unravel the intersections of what ifs and maybes
and the forever, unanswerable, why?

No, I'm not an embittered body,
or a broken string,
others have held up under more severe strain,
but the questions linger
and the bitter continues to rise...

Untitled

2007-02-14T08:09:00.000-08:00

run deep
deeper
run deeper still
to the core of the self you claim
behind the shadows
under the intangible
you call his love for you
feather imprints on your bed
and the smell of sweat
that in the next day
won't turn you on
are the only reminders of the night before
(one night just isn't enough
to proclaim your undying love)
but you want to run
to the thick of his lips
to the broad of his shoulders
never big enough to satisfy
the need of your tongue
to roll and make the world a better place
and you sprint deep
deeper
deeper still
to the days
when you've had a craving
so strong
that lemons couldn't make you pucker
and salsa tasted like yogurt
and sweat wasn't all that salty
you don't ever want to slow down
the constant pumping tires out your muscles
you want to keep on running deep
deeper
deeper still
slide through
to the core
and you want him to touch you in places
only you yourself have been able to
taking you places only your imagination
has taken you to
and grab yourself from the inside
turn you inside out
and all you can say is yeah
and your breathing slows
and speeds up
and slows
and your heart be still
be still
but it's like standing in front of some train
that's never going to stop
and horses can't pull you away
and it's just like that commercial
and you want to be a commercial
and you can't speak
because your tongue
is searching
and his tongue is probing you
licking you clean
from the inside

ASYLUMS (or Etudes from the Dark)

2007-02-13T21:18:00.000-08:00

The story below was previously published in:
http://apla.org/publications/corpus/fall2004/Corpus3.pdf

Chapter One: Solitude Standing

AZRA
Against the whitewashed wall, one brumeliad stands brilliantly red, while another whispers its last breath away, the parent dying to give way for the child emerging from its side. Outside the window, the bougainvillea blooms orange fire, as the afternoon turns into night. And I’m wishing those tire sounds were crickets, those gun bursts, tree frogs. The night feels heavy.
Below my live space, my workspace is heated by the kitchen from the restaurant downstairs, and its patrons that crowd into the tiny space at all hours of the day. Nicolas, the owner, a heavy-set man with a bushy mustache, runs the place like a third world dom. He sits at the end of the counter, which extends from the cash register next to the kitchen, all the way to the front, greeting each person who walks through the door with gusto. Mostly, it’s men who sit at the counter, who on certain nights would surprise me from my sleep with their yells. Always, it would be a cheer - of victory or encouragement – for Mexico, winning or losing in the most recent soccer match.

Each day, before work, I take the dog out for a walk. It’s always the same. Out the front door, where he manages always to hit the frame with his wagging tail, across the street to the patch of green in front of the firehouse, where he sniffs at the same spot, turns and lifts his leg. Two squirts, a wag of the tail. He leads me down the block, underneath the American Express billboard, where Baby crashes after a night of turning tricks. If she’s awake, she offers a smile, a pipe, or, “How you doin?”

He runs around the corner, towards the Vietnamese market, finally to the small park where the signs shout their warning, “No dogs allowed!” This being Oakland. This morning, I look up from the screen, and there he stands, tail wagging. He knows it’s time. I rise from my chair, and my knees crack. “You better be quick about this.”

***
“Sorry I’m late.”

“‘s ok. No one else is here yet.” Martin looks up from his terminal. “Girrrl, you look like shit!”

“You would, too, if you’ve been up all night.”

“He didn’t come home again?”

‘’Yeah, that. But I’ve also been up writing. Then BART was crazy again. You know how it is. A little rain and it screws up the entire system.”

“I don’t know why you put up with it. But hey, it’s not my business.”

“Yeah, right . . . like that ever stopped you before. But you’re right. I don’t know why I put up with it.”

“Listen, do you want my advice?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Well, yeah.”

***
Do I really? Have a choice, I mean. I feel trapped in this cycle that keeps coming back. Not to me, but to him. To his needs, his life. God knows I’ve tried to leave, but something within always says, “Stay!” And I do. So I lose myself in poetry that speaks more eloquently about how I feel than I can ever do. To him. To my friends. Even to myself.
***
Outside, the rain’s slowing. But I wish it weren’t. I wish it would just keep on coming; become biblical. Just so I wouldn’t have to think. About what I left behind and what’s ahead. What I have unwittingly given up in order to be here, now. I wish for rain strong enough to wash away the street beneath my window, a torrent to drown this city, for a downpour strong enough to wash the grime from my soul, just so I can start anew.
***
In my dreams, I fly free. Without boundaries that bind even birds to territories. Without seasons that dictate the flight of the swallowtail. I fly alone above my world made small by the necessity to hide. Away from questions and self-awareness; far away from responsibilities, perceived, real. And sometimes, I want to do more than just fly, but the facility of floating, or riding the wind, or merely lying suspended keeps me from doing much more.

***
“So what did you do last night?”

“Nothing. Stayed home with the dog.”

“Did he . . . ”

“What?”

“ . . . come home?”

“No.”

Before lunch, I slip out without telling Martin. He’s sweet, really. Very sisterly. But sometimes, I need time away, even from family. Though the morning fog has not yet lifted, there’s a stream of joggers down the Embarcadero. I ease myself into their traffic, merging slowly so as not to impede any of them . Feeling cold, I button up my jacket, and stuff my hands in my pants pockets. I make it all the way down to the wharf: occasionally stepping aside to let joggers pass by. “Thanks.” “You’re welcome.” I watch their backs, as they maneuver through tourists, or each other.
As I get closer to the pier, the fog thins across the bay, the sun’s rays managing to break through in points over the bridge’s towers. Without histories, this city would be beautiful.

“Come out with me and Eddie tonight.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not? What do you gotta do? And girl, don’t say write.”

“Funny.”

“C’mon. It’ll be fun. We’ll have cocktails at Romper Room or Gravity. Wherever you wanna go. C’mon. You know you need this.”

“Mmmmm. ..”

“C’mon. We’ll come pick you.”

Sometimes, I wish he never did come home. While the night passes more quickly without worry, doubt, or fear, I can fly more easily alone. Without having to disentangle. Arms, legs, sometimes words he says out loud in his sleep. Or my self from his. Because I’m starting to realize that I’m becoming like him. Another being, slowly becoming lost within multiple entanglements. Of desire. Naming. Belonging.

Anthem for a Memorium

2007-02-12T14:15:00.000-08:00

A previous version of this poem was published in The Yearn, 1996?

You and I -
We fight for positions,
my body of ocean
upon your land mass.

We break open prayers,
neither oshun nor bathala
not even allah, or yahweh
can interpret -

so set they are in their ways
of desire and control.

But what do we struggle for?
In the middle of the night,
heavy, like a laborer's t-shirt
after a day of hard work, or

when the moon is full
above this city
forgotten by all, 'cept by those
who must remain,

and struggle to remember
that you and I
are not a forgotten people.
We all may not belong here,

but we do fit in.

And why do we keep on fighting?
Each of us knowing
that we are at risk for what we do,
'cause sometimes

walking without a gun
can be just as dangerous
as fucking without a condom, and
sometimes those cravings that tell us to go numb

sting a lot more than needles
(can't clean our rigs enough
to stop the virus of poverty and hatred and violence
from inside and outside our borders)

So where must the fight lead to?
when sometimes the only truth is
even brown folk with thick skin
bleed red.

Origins Obscura: Phrenology, Physiognomy, Anthropology and Spectacle (An Excerpt from the play)

2007-02-09T21:02:00.000-08:00

A version of the following was originally published in disOrient, issue #9. 2001

(BACKGROUND/FOREGROUND: Fair accoutrements - bright, spinning lights; animals out of sync (a bear in a grass skirt; a poodle dressed as a seal, balancing a beach ball on its nose); spaceships; scythes, swords and gun powder, perhaps a ploughshare; jars filled with peaches, asparagus, basal ganglia and frontal cortex(es); a thousand smiling faces, yellow as the sun.
(CAN BE NARRATED BY "A" OR FLASHED ON BACK SCREENS)

EPIGRAPH

A: (In high southern English) He speaks sincerely from the bottom of his heart

B: "In the natural order of things, light rises to the top, dark sinks to the bottom. Perfected man is unifying human culture, not only through (dy)fusion...

A: Diffusion, defined: To disperse or be dispersed from the center, be spread widely; also means light, lighting to avoid glare.

B: ...not only through diffusion, but through the extinction of the lower grades as their representatives rise into higher grades...(T)he races of the continents are gradually uniting in lighter blend(!), and the burden of humanity is already in large measure the White Man's burden - for viewing the human world as it is, white and strong are synonymous terms."

Hyperlink to Act I (Jump page shows a roller coaster)
or on screen front stage with roller coaster

A: In the beginning, nameless bodies emerge and merge from darkness, as shadows, darkly habited and darkly marked. C is background music.

C: In secrecy, we moved through history’s lines, obscured by lights of conquest – a multitude of wingless flies and legless toads, over-running stretches of open land and mountain homes. There were names for us then – heathen, barbarian, sinner – propelling our true names to secret portals. We remain hidden, even now.

D: I have searched for you in numerous tomes, countless faces. Have you already seen me searching through the prism of time and wisdom of distance? Like all secrets, there are whispers of you on lips, or bits aging between yellow paper. At times, you peek through to the present, but sure as water flows, you disappear again into the intractable recesses of the past.

E: Last I looked, you were drowning under the weight of the sun, clothed in cotton fibers that scratched your back. What’s behind those eyes? Is it anger or shame? Pain? Or maybe a deadened sense of self?

F: I can see the pride, though here you are on display, a spectacle for all to see. Measured. Catalogued. Numbered.

C: In secrecy, we moved and in moving we survived. As we brushed with our fingers clustered veins that caused pain to the body, so we maneuvered with our minds the rivers of eyes floating past, ushered them past our bodies, hurdled them past our stories. Though generations have gone, I remain here, a shade waiting for release, patiently, for your arrival. I have stayed to protect the stories hiding in the shadows. I give them, now, to you. Remember them. Remember us.

Hyperlink – Jump Page – Smithsonian searching for proof of engrams?

REELS

2007-02-09T19:36:00.000-08:00

This story was originally published in http://apla.org/publications/corpus/summer_2003/corpus_summer_2003.pdf

Frame #1
Once in the middle of the night, under a full moon’s watch, I took my father’s car and drove to the far end of the park. I slowly took off all my clothes and hung them on a tree. I lay down on the grass under an evergreen with low branches, waved away anyone who ventured too close, and watched the moon move across the sky. I was a horny adolescent trying to find lyricism in public sex. I grabbed for the moon and without touching myself, I came.

Frame #2
The last time I was here on top of this hill, I was a 27-year old trying not to stare too hard at the teenager nervously jogging through. I was in LA for a visit and had not returned to my haunts for several years. I was interested in checking things out. Although the terrain remained the same, the views had changed. In certain sections, like the Bird Sanctuary, where there used to be a sea of pale bodies with specks of color, brown and black boys and men had taken over. Most of them were proudly displaying their wares to each other. The road connecting the southern end of the Park (the observatory side) to the northern end (Travel Town) was closed. “Due to Fire Danger,” the signs warned. Motor vehicles were not allowed to drive up this road, making this the section of the park least frequented by families and therefore, the busiest cruising area. This road is where I watched a young man spread his legs against the back window of his car and fuck himself with a dildo. Perhaps the most telling sign of the changing times was in the litter. Mixed in with the ground cover of fallen leaves and broken branches from eucalyptus and conifers were spent condoms, their wrappers, and those tiny lube containers created by someone who saw the need and fulfilled it.

Frame #3
I hold a prism between you and these pages. I rely on memory to reconstruct these stories, but my memory is tricky and random. I can’t, for example, tell you the dates of my relationships, but I can tell you the length of time I’ve ever spent with anyone. Neither can I describe the features of men I’ve been with, but I can tell you all the names I’ve been given. And, although I can’t claim Wilt Chamberlain numbers in 23 years of having sex, I can’t count how many men I’ve been with. Most of them have been nameless. Sometimes, I didn’t even see their faces.

Frame #4
The first time cruising through, I was so scared of being seen by someone I knew that I sped from Ferndell to the Observatory, zoomed through the Hollywood sign vista, coasted down to Crystal Springs, and ended up out of breath at the Riverside Tennis Courts in a matter of minutes. The next time, I was no less afraid. Again, I quickly pedaled through, but this time surreptitiously glancing at cars parked down the entire length of the road, some with doors slightly ajar to show men jacking off or men getting sucked off. After a few weeks, I actually slowed down, and took the time to watch from the safety of the road as young men in tight corduroy Op shorts and blue Vans tennis shoes, and older men in jeans with crotches sanded to highlight substantial bulges, disappeared into a grotto of trees. Some men rushed, while others casually strolled in, all occasionally looking back. I kept returning almost every weekend, never daring to go further than a few yards from the mouth of the cave of trees, always trying to convince myself to move in just a little bit closer. On the 10th visit, I nervously followed a shirtless young man with shoulder length black hair into the bushes.

Frame #5
He pushes his sunburnt torso against mine. His lips and tongue reach out for my neck, graze there for a minute, then slowly move up to my ear. He thrusts his hard dick against my thigh; his hands roam against my back as if searching for answers to hidden meanings. He asks me how old I am and I lie, “16.” I don’t know why. He tells me he just turned 18. His lips slide back down to my neck, jump to my left nipple, and glide down to my belly button. All the while, his hands explore my backside. When he finally takes my dick in his mouth, I shoot.

Frame #6
Afterwards, he asks me, “What are you anyway? You’re too dark to be Chinese or Mexican, but your hair’s not thick so you can’t be black.”

Frame #7
Martin and I sit together on a bench overlooking the Observatory. He tells me of the first time he ever came to Griffith Park. A drunken white man had blocked his path, and without warning, threw his arms around Martin to give him a bear hug. Startled, Martin pushed him and asked what he was doing. The man then demanded that Martin turn around. Martin reached into his pants pocket, pulls out his switchblade, and aimed it at the man’s neck.
“You better take off, or I’ma cut you.”

He was my first park friend, my mentor and bodyguard, this young man with a lumbering, awkward body. We met in August of ’79, before he was to start 10th grade at Lincoln High. I was a year younger. He was running down a dirt path, freaked out by the rattlesnake he had just seen, and ran into me. I must have been knocked back six feet. He remained standing. Although he initially assumed I was a Satanas, and I assumed he was 18th Street, we had an easy truce and became fast friends. We set up times to meet at the bench, and later on, after learning how to drive, cruised together through the park and streets of LA in borrowed cars. We also started going to the bars and clubs together when I was in the 10th grade, our entree into the LA club scene facilitated by the universal ID’s, pot and cocaine. I have not seen Martin since the day after my high school graduation party. By then, he was living in Austin, TX, working construction with his uncle. He had come back to LA to celebrate with me. After he went back, our letters, postcards, and phone calls to each other slowly dwindled. Almost two years after he initially left for Texas, our communication stopped altogether. We did not have a falling out. It’s just that time and distance evaporate intimacy.

Frame #8
I grew up in Silverlake, first in an apartment on Hyperion Avenue south of Sunset, then in a house on Benton Way, north of Sunset. Across from our apartment lived two gay men whose blinds always seemed to be open. Next to them lived a young married couple with their newborn son. The husband used to sit in front of the TV after dinner, most times in nothing but his wifebeater and underwear. Sometimes, as he lounged on the recliner, one of his hands would play absently with the wiry hairs on his belly, while his other hand would slip in between the waistband of his shorts to cup, fondle, or make adjustments in his crotch. I spent countless hours in my room with the lights off, lying on my bed with a blanket wrapped around me (in case one of my brothers or sister walked in). I would watch both of these apartments and masturbate to glimpses of furry crotches, and if I was lucky, fully nude men lounging.

Frame #9
I don’t think my dick was ever soft between Junior High and High School. I attended King Jr. High, which stood between Frog Pond, a bathhouse, and the Silver Dollar Saloon. Outside the gates of the school, I once found a stack of gay porn hidden behind a bush. Every night for several weeks afterwards, I would return to look for more. Though I never found any more, these early evening treks turned into an exploration of my neighborhood. Occasionally, I hid in shrubs or trees outside someone’s house, and would simply watch as the inhabitant(s) lived through their routines.

I created a mental map of where the gay men lived, and where the single, straight men lived (alone or in packs). I also took notice of the young men who lived with just their mothers. I’m not really sure why. Perhaps, as a momma’s boy myself, I identified with them, these tough-acting adolescents whose hearts reached out only to, and whose hearts could only be reached by, their mothers. They made my own heart ache.

Frame #10
At 14, I lost my virginity to someone old enough to be my father in the backyard of The Frog Pond. I had just finished a 3-mile run and was walking to cool down. He approached, greeted me, then said, “Do you want to get sucked?” I think I mumbled my reply. Inside the gate, he knelt in front of me and took my penis in his mouth. I had dreamt about this moment, fantasized about it (although the man/boy in my fantasies was never older than 18). And though I was familiar with the pleasures ofjacking off, I did not expect this feeling of rawness, the feeling that all of my nerve endings had somehow become concentrated on my dick head. The nerves were radiating across my stomach, around the top of my head, to the tips of my digits. As I shot my load into his throat, my breath seemed to get stuck in my own throat, and for a few seconds, I forgot how to breathe. I ultimately leaned against the fence, barely able to move, while the man stroked my legs and buried his nose between my balls, inhaling and exhaling deeply. After a few minutes, I thanked him, pulled up my shorts, and ran home feeling guilty and dirty, high and liberated at the same time.

Frame #11
Up the street from King, the Vista Theater showed double billings of the latest gay porn movies with intriguing titles like, One Thousand and One Inches and Packed Jockstraps. Martin made friends with one of the cashiers, who would sneak us in once in a while. We’d sit at opposite ends of the theatre, to jack off or get sucked off by men. Today, when I watch porn, with their virtually didactic position on condom sex and strict adherence to shaved bodies, I wonder whatever happened to the hairy, one-named porn stars of the 70’s – those men who made movies before bodily fluids became anathema.

Frame #12
Yes, I was barebacking before the term was even coined. (Although barebacking might not be the proper term, since in the age of AIDS, it is seen by some as an immoral act, to others an act of resistance and expression of freedom, and still to others a mere lapse of judgment. But one can also argue that buttfucking is also burdened by these notions. The obvious difference is that barebacking is framed in industrial society’s ironic love of experiencing “the natural.”) The transition from skin-to-skin sex to sex with latex was quite momentous. As gay boys and men with the “sexual revolution” still fresh in our minds, we had to re-conceptualize the condom, from a prophylactic/contraceptive (obviously used by straight people) to a necessary lifesaver. Before 1982, condoms were not even largely marketed as effective protection against STD’s. Additionally for me and for a lot of young people, the difficulty was in my/our embarrassment at having to buying condoms and negotiating condom use with partners.

Frame #13
At the corner of Santa Monica and Sunset, just up the street from where the original A Different Light bookstore would open, men lined up after the bars closed, while cars circled the block. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and sneaking out of the house to walk to Sunset. In the beginning, I was too shy and had taken to heart the childhood warning about getting into a stranger’s car.

Frame #14
Some truths are embedded within prisms, within layers. Within.

Frame #15
An internet search of all public sex venues in LA, excluding colleges, gyms, clubs, bookstores, street cruising, rest areas, stand-alone public bathrooms, hotels, office buildings, malls, libraries, and sports arenas (in short, bush sex), reveals nearly 100 places. Back when I was coming up, I knew of 5 parks. Two were in West Hollywood - this was before incorporation, when no one lived in West Hollywood, but in “Beverly Hills adjacent.” Two were in Hollywood. Of course, there was Griffith Park, immortalized in countless publications and oral histories, and mythologized in public lore. Here is where I learned, practiced, and perfected what a friend calls my “spidey sense” - an unerring ability to sniff out public sex arenas.

I found out about Griffith Park sex by accident. In the summer of 1979, I attended a cello clinic at Immaculate Heart College. During a break, my friend Alejandra and I took a walk to Ferndell. She noticed him first - the man openly staring at my ass. This was also the moment when I realized that my ass had magic powers (as Cisco, my second boyfriend would later say, my ass could turn a bottom boy into a top).
Two years earlier, I had come out to myself and to some of my friends. 1977 was not a particularly easy time for me. I was adjusting to life in the United States, while at the same time dealing with my awakening (homo)sexuality. True to my bookworm reputation, I read all the books relating to homosexuality at the Cahuenga branch library, including 1960’s psychological treatises on “aberrant” sexual behaviors. John Rechy’s memoir(s)/novels, from City of Night to Rushes, also figured prominently in my early inquiries. What really kept me going back to the library, at least until I finally started having sex was the Sunshine Press literature, which published interviews with prominent gay authors and anthologies including Orgasms of Light, a collection of poetry, short fiction and graphics. All of these books (even the psychology texts) taught me all I needed to know about man-to-man sex, and also informed my love of research and literature.

I returned to the park by myself the following weekend.

Frame #16
Los Angeles sings to me. I hear cacophonous symphonies in the way freeways divide neighborhoods. I am enraptured by palm trees fighting their way up to the sky; to chaparral brambling down hillsides. The city, a dry riverbed of concrete and struggling vegetation, courses through me. It’s an arid shield against hopelessness; a beacon for a realized future. I revel in this new energy that has come to define the city - the tongues and hues that bring back that biblical tower, with no god to damn us. Los Angeles grabs me by the waist, by the throat, spins me around, while I dance to its versatile rhythms. I dip the fog, which isn’t quite fog that covers the basin and dampens the energy of the solar-powered people. I move to the beat of high-rises and Skid Row. But most of all, I two-step to the pulse of the earth that grows daily beneath me. I feel its measured up-thrust, the gentle, almost imperceptible movement, like a new blade of grass pushing its way through fertile soil. These mountains girding the vast expanse will one day be the tallest in the world, and snow falling on the Andes, blizzards blanketing Everest, will feel like tropical rain in comparison to the tempest. But sometimes, Los Angeles swallows me and I wallow in the depth of tears the city sheds for countless unrealized dreams. No, not of becoming A Somebody, but dreams that come with the promise of the name.

Frame #17
I haven’t met many angels. One though, came into my life, with broken wings, lustrous black hair that framed his face, and flawless brown skin. He said he was Cuban, born in Florida, and raised in Guam. (I have always been, and will continue to be attracted to island men - I feel a connection in our land knowledge of the finite and water wisdom of endless possibilities.) With a father in the military, his family moved often. With a younger brother who never left him alone, he spent most times outside the house. We met by the tree decorated with used Christmas tree air fresheners, and talked to each other beyond the too-quick groping that resulted in a too-quick climax. We saw each other in and out of the park for the next year, and managed to slow down enough to become comfortable with each other’s island brands, until his family once again had to move. Every week for six months thereafter, I received a hand-made postcard. I still have them, these angels with clipped wings clutching stomachs as if in pain, or falling from cliffs. Then one day, the postcards stopped coming and poems I sent were returned unopened. I stopped frequenting the parks soon after. There were too many reminders of his presence - the olive branch by the reservoir was still halfway broken, our blue contribution still hung on the Christmas tree, and the skunk odor, which had become aphrodisiac, lingered. According to Martin, I had broken the prime directive to, “Never fall in love with trade.” He had just finished reading City of Night and (mis)quoted incessantly from it. But why not? In my 16-year old mind, that was one of the reasons to go to bars and parks, to look for someone to fall for; a man who could be attentive and strong, creative and intelligent, sexy, worldly and easily delighted by simplicity.

I like to imagine that he’s marooned somewhere on some island, unable to make contact. In my mind, I see him still as a young man, unchanged by the passing of time. His name still fits, still feels right curled…

CROSSING COMPROMISES

2006-03-22T17:52:00.000-08:00

there's nothing like crosswords on sunday morning
after waking late from a dream-filled saturday night
coffee in one hand
a pen in the other.

he sits cross-legged,
hunched over the bistro coffee table
eyeing the tiny lines criss-
crossing the corner of a page,
familiar as scars.

the sun shines through the kitchen windows
between the yellow curtain
his lover picked for his birthday last year
after they had argued over decorations
in their newly-found apartment.

he compromised the kitchen window
for the bedroom rug.

he crosses himself
believing tranquility to be found
in solitude, newspaper in hand.

yet,
what is a ten-letter word for being alone
on a day like this
after HE promised it won't happen

again

MANTRA

2006-03-22T17:46:00.000-08:00

Trill

a vibrato
deep

in your throat
swirl

a mantra around 'til I
burst

open, the length encased in second skin
breaking

a flower
forms

from fingers floating free.

If the trick prior is transparent,
you asked me to write a poem
while standing over you.
But my poetry cannot emerge
from moments like this.
Only when it's just me
and five fingers

flying free.

After the overflow of precipitous rupture
star jasmine imprints around your neck, clogging your nostrils,
breaking into your breathing,
how can I, then make light of your need
to hear poetry in a most unpoetic position,
though many have tried
in that particular position
proving pointedly the existence of god
cause god spelled backwards is...

ON MOLUKEIA

2006-03-22T17:36:00.000-08:00

, beyond

the strand of white-duned beach

, where

tourists sunbathe in the nude

, past

the plush polo grounds

, where

chestnut horses canter

, clear of

the cedar houses

, across

the narrow airstrip

, where

adventurers glide for twenty minutes

, stands

a bivouac

, where

trucks, tents, and soldiers

, are

camped as though painted against the scene.

A mile further down

Kaena shivers with life.

SOLAR POWERED

2006-02-04T00:36:00.000-08:00

For ग.अ

On days like this,
when rain

falls

drips

or thunders down

bending calla lily and tulip bells
to the ground

Or some days
when fog

meander

or creep

between jasmine stars and lavender cones

You wish for the sun
(An orb on fire,
bright as bougainvillea,
prismatic as anthurium
in bloom)

But me,
I celebrate the plump sound of rain on banana leaves
Revel in muffled whispers of mist over fronds,
knowing that just beyond these clouds

you swing under willows,
your laughter brighter
than the sun in perihelion.

MEDITATION (one)

2006-02-04T00:24:00.000-08:00

Within the trajectory of creative production and cultural creation, where does fiction merge with history? When does truth become myth? How does memory become glazed through the dual prisms of time and distance? I'm afraid of the etchings of time on skin, though eyes remain shiny, black, and powerful. I can see for a thousand miles in every direction, plot the course of an albatross in flight. With an immense wing span, my imagination soars. But down here, limited by my body, down here, my touch extends a couple of feet, at most. And I'm afraid of these lines that remind me of the time I have left to produce and help create a change in this world, believing in the power of artistry and creativity and beliefs and children and pure, pure, pure imagination to transform, to help effect change. Yet I question myself daily about my creations and abilities. How do words flow so succintly, so gloriously from other's mouths, while I struggle daily to create a perfect union with the thoughts in my mind and the words that slowly fill up a page, then two, finally getting to a point where meaning and intent no longer merge. But the words keep coming at a discordant pace from the thought. It's senseless. I wish I had greater mastery of the art of storytelling, but that has been lost in the migrations, the translations, the transitions, even in the genesis of the languages I hold. I'm confronted with legacies of conquests daily. Though speaking many languages, I am not fully comfortable in speaking one; not fluent in any tongue. Sometimes, I become lost in imagining a world where knowing--or is that owning?--language,is as they say, a snap. No, I don't mean to become a fluidic entity, able to move through boundaries and grammar, rules and vocabularies, learned or instinctual (depending on who to believe) response to concepts, and words, words, words with ease of air, or imagination. And I wish that speaking and language and communication and tongues and bodies, did not require so much maintenance, so much resolve.

RITUALS

2006-02-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

I. Camouflage

This exposed nerve, which feels like that moment before orgasm, in that place where pain sits before being transformed into pleasure,

reminds me:

that I have changed with the years and the miles, as I strain against the revolution of the earth; that
my mind takes longer to reach conclusions, years longer to decide; that
I have taken up mantras, chants and rites for protection; that
my torso, a gyroscope, defies gravity, laughs at physics; that
I have changed with many rituals, and my body has become

the site of chameleon greetings.

II. Fade

Every seven years they fly out from the ground, hold each other in tight embrace, and dance the dance of the dying. Frenzied knots blur the
moon's face, gauze-like wings invisible

like me standing against your doorway hoping for an invitation but you motion to the wind or the oncoming summer storm
freezing me out My heart falls like countless gossamer layers
after twenty four hours of intricate ritual which ensures another generation will grow under ground

Waiting.

III. Strike

Oh, how easy to ( )

and bruise skin --
a slight darkening
a quick spreading...

blood through broken vessels,
free as water flows between cracks in pottery

glazed in the sun, or fired in a pit

Oh, how I wish I were able to ( )

in the middle of the night, tracing
rivulets of ants marching
from the outside wall through the window
to the kitchen, to the pantry

a virulent army invading my inner chambers.

A PLEA TO THE ANCESTORS

2006-02-02T10:21:00.000-08:00

I.

Have you ever seen the sun
moments before it's blinked out by the sea?
On the horizon

a muted dome suspended
on air, as if nothing else matters
until dusk settles and night returns.

Have you ever sensed that moment
before this darkness?
In its weight

is a certain potency,
not like the song of tree frogs,
more like the opening of the earth beneath your feet.

II.

On a cliff immobile against the crash,
on an island growing from itself,
shark god meets fire. Here, I start to believe
(as spirit guides lead me).

But the birth - as they say - is difficult.

I stand, as before
empty palms facing skyward,
elbows pointing to the ground.
In my mind I run free
through groves and feathers,

vermillion against the azure of the sea.
I look forward always
the ancestors have taught us,
don't turn your back against the ocean.
But the stories and stones,

my amulets for protection,
are hidden from phantoms I must face.
I stand still, as before, afraid,
unable to see clearly.
Mom, I'm not yet ready.

III.

Here at the edge
where land meets air meets water
I see grandmas face at the end.
This I know to be a dream.
See, I wasn't there.
She did not hold on for my arrival.
She called
but I could not run fast enough.
At least I see her
even if only when I sleep.

IV.

Each morning I awaken,
run through routines.
I undress, shower, iron

and change into the clothes I wear for most of the day.
I glance at the direction of your picture

my eyes

swing instead to your granddaughter's photo

The one who looks like your son, my brother.

But even through all this
through all the obvious threads,
I still don't recognize what I see.

V.

I knit
I stitch
one a day
and remember
your body
not moving
wedged between
cement and rock wall
where bamboo pipe
is skewered annually
days before the rains come
for ground water to to well up into
to slake the thirst of 4 children
to water calla lillies, flowers for the dead.

VI.

Sometimes I try to hear the language of children,
the forced laughter of bound throats,
the smile of those weary to the bone.
Sometimes I try to envision the dew on plants
whose names I don't recall.

They've been replaced by exotic sounds:
cabbage, lettuce, beans.
In the remembering,
I lose the sense of that time, when we -- humanity, the earth
when we were all in balance.

I no longer listen to the songs
of rain on grass.

THEN AND NOW

2006-02-01T00:26:00.000-08:00

For ER and MAC

I.

There was a time I was lost in the decay
of what once was a promise of trust.

Life had become like the seasons
as predictable as rainy and dry.

This was where I lived for three years
and half, in a cryptic state of dis-flux.

(The changes within the body-geography
imperceptible as California seasons).

What if I were to shout his name out loud
in a crowded room?

Would the wounds re-open,
so that once again,

I can beat myself enough inside
to resemble the red earth of O'ahu,

laden with sanguine history.
Back then, crimson signified only defeat.

But even in the parallels --
the 38th and 17th, yes, in the border crossing of Tijuana,

even beyond the green belts
separating hills from flatlands,

There is hope.

There is strength in rage and action,
There is beauty in examination and movement,
There is renewal of the soul.

II.

I felt the tug of the moon along my equator last night.

I undulated with the tide as it rose and fell,
swirled among the million bits of earth
as brine splashed over me.
Feverish, I rose higher to meet his spark.

Gently, he descended,
wrapping me in familiar warmth, we
an entanglement of moonbeams and mist.

First I saw him was in the winter.
His iridescent face shining upon my landscape,
freeing the light hidden deep
within the tunnels, where the past is buried,
murmuring myriad memories and promises,

A verdancy of veritude.

THE SAVIOR IN MOTION

2006-02-01T00:17:00.000-08:00

Thanks to C. Arellano

GENESIS: 1.0

It began with the taking.
A grey lump of soil
sprinkled with saliva,

pressed into form by thumbs,
shaping eyes that will soon
see the coming

of the fall.
The graceless, grim god towers
over the valley, knowing

the sheep will rut this season, soon
the fatted calf will be killed.
He decrees:

To appease the lord thy god, let
run the gravel with blood
of toads and children.

Crucify the covenant,
condemn the pact,
kill your enemies

In their beds. After the fall,
the chosen people of a vengeful god
proceeded into the world.

They multiplied. With
memories of paradise kept alive
by prophets and madmen,

spurred by the promise of everlasting life,
They set sail

in search of gold and glory and god
into the darkest recesses

of yet unexplored
continents and island

to plunder and kill
and kill again.

REVELATION: 1.1

The anthems of crises and struggles
ring furiously across open lands
and sweep over intractable seas.
The futility of fighting wars
where odds are stacked against the fighter from the start
makes the body crumble
before natural decay takes place.

Fear bloodthirst, famine, fear itself
always ready, always close at hand.

Look now at the middle lands
where once, it was prophesied
that a blue prince would arise,

uniting remote bands.
Witness and tremble
that it has come to this:

Blood for land
Blood for heritage
Blood for righteousness.

Look further into memory.
See the world come to an end,
the glorified allied machines

clash with the axis that grinds with divine winds.
Hear them, the suicide screams.
Look further back

To the slaughter in the middle passage,
to the trails of tears and blood and sweat
the toil of a million hands

for king cotton and king cane.
Look here, now

Amnesia.

THE PSALMS: 1.0

Though we walk through time
and pretend we're invincible,
deep cuts inflicted upon birth
and tremors from within,
threaten to tear our bodies apart.

Despair is incurable.

We are, but children of our parents,
and their parents before them;
and before them,
to the original who created the sin,
the one who forged that one, infallible flaw.

The mistake was in the creation.

But sing now the praises of god,
disguise the thought,
be still.

THE GOSPELS: 1.0

There beyond the mountains,
immutable sentries of age-old lives,
he stands as if guarding his belly,
hands splayed just below the navel,
fingers entwined.

He's deep in thought. But what does a seer see in his mind's eye?
What does it mean to stand there against a backdrop of majesty, and
look as if the slaughter has just begun?

He turns away with the quickness of wind,
throws his arms up to the sky.

Silence.