Like You, Joan
Posted by Enmanuel Martinez | Filed under '09 Spring: Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
St. Joan of Arc, you managed to preserve your self,
died at nineteen: a virgin—
having given your self to God.
What all did he whisper to you
in the fields behind your house
as you tended to cattle and adolescent dreams?
Did he say that he was love?
Give you of his body and tell you to eat—
what ecstasy! Did he leave
stigmata on your feet and palms,
as he has done to so many other girls?
Why do men hurt that which they love?
This was your first calling,
though you were not his first.
Where you his last?
Unlike you, Joan,
I had no cattle or sheep to tend,
only the heavy solitude that is inherited
by middle children and only sons.
No fields to run through or pastures
in which to hide, only then to be found by God—
only concrete and crack-house-corned streets.
Playtime was in the basement.
There, I often danced
alone in front of a ceramic statue of Christ.
His eyes we empty, hollow,
hiding everything yet nothing.
But his eyes were always on me, so
I danced for him, giving
of my body—Eucharist incarnate.
He was always willing to watch.
Never did he look away, never
told me to stop. Always observant,
silent.
Nighttime: parents out of the house,
my face pushed into pillow and sheets,
arms and legs outstretched,
palms placed up. My body,
a human cross—juvenile crucifixion,
though I prayed long and hard
for God to save me and
give reason to my suffering!
He response: silence.
No divine intervention.
His hands we rough,
smell of smoke and taste of wine on his lips.
Told me I was special.
Like you, Joan, I was to be a vessel.
In me, he implanted his divinity.
I alone carry that burden,
knowing that, one day, it will be the death of me.
But Joan, you were the special one,
not I. God was always with you,
led you through all harm and danger
and into Heaven.
I was forsaken—a sacrificial lamb maybe.
My dream had always been of martyrdom.
Little did I know that I was destined
to play the role of victim.
Like you, Joan, I too was not spared.
But where was my God,
as I screamed and squirmed,
supplicating him to stop.
Maybe it was that he could not hear me?
Was his mind unhearing to the shrills
that one omits when skin stretches,
rips and bleeds?
Maybe it was that he did not care to?
I listened to the example of God
and learned to keep silent.
Did not speak out for the fear of being called
a heretic, a liar, insane, demented…
by those I loved.
Kept lips and eyelids shut.
I would not be burned at the stake like you, Joan,
but suffered the pains of betrayal all the same.
I was no martyr
but an outcast nonetheless.
I too now carry a cross, so
I call to you, Joan.
Tell me, how does one come to forgive
that which they fear and hate?
Be my staff and help me rise.
I have been bent over praying on knees
to a deaf God for far too long.
Your weapons were a banner, armor, an army, horse and sword.
My arms: penn, paper and this weary voice.
But I would trade mine for yours any day
if doing so came with the promise of victory
over past memories and
every man that prays on children.
I would wage a war,
its clamor so loud it wakes the dead
and God, who dreams on,
incognizant of his children calling.
Joan, will you be my saving knight,
the voice that does not abandon me at night,
in fire, burning coals or in the midst of mobs.
You don’t have to say anything just
yet. Only, give
me fruit that will not spoil and
grace that will not slip out from my hands.
Shooting Straight
Posted by Justin Reilly | Filed under '09 Spring: Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
So I’m straight
Everyone here knows I date black girls
I eat red meat
Play basketball
And never talk about balls unless I am referring to the ones I put in the basket
Oh and when I am playing that game where u get other guys to look at ur balls
Then make them bend over and u kick them in the ass and call em fag
You know the game everyone learned how to play from that movie Waiting
Yeah I am pretty much your typical straight kid
Oh but what’s with dudes looking at you when ur in the shower
That shits gay
And so is that shirt ‘your wearing’ (dude in the front row)
And those shoes josh has on
Them shits r str8 homo
Dear Straight men,
You don’t always have to run from hugs
They aren’t dream catchers of your masculinity
That slowly drain your manhood as you sleep
I promise
Your brothers arms are not sleeves to a straight jacket
That suffocate your unwillingness to be sensitive
You won’t wake up the next morning
Drowsy with a fragmented memory of emasculation and shame
And if you shed a tear
You won’t drown
one Sunday morning in an affinity
For blonde haired men and know Jude Law is the only man that really could steal your heart
And even if this was possible
Maybe just maybe
Your would understand
That love does not know gender
It does not know limits
It only knows heat
The sweltering breath exchanged by two lovers
That only emerges when 2 souls finally connect
Forget about everything
And lay naked
Just so their Prop 8 sanctioned wardrobe won’t get in the way
Stop calling things gay
Ignorance is not bliss
Or chanting no homo
After every Freudian slip
Just because you are too insecure to admit
That every time you get in the shower you are worried about whose bigger than you
Quit acting like men
are flirting with you when they ask you for the time
Straight women don’t want to get with you
What makes you think gay men are any different
Intolerance is unattractive
And those prejudicial handshakes aren’t getting you laid anytime soon
Dear gay men,
Stay strong
Stay hungry
Stay passionate
You see
I’ve got love
For love
Any man, man enough to fight for someone
He loves
knows that life
With all its beauty and splendor
Is worth nothing
If you have not found something to die for
And I know
The day will come
When you can just blend in
Walk hand in hand in the busiest of parks
And kiss at the perfect time when the sun is barely peeking through the trees
Hallmark will make anniversary cards with this image not just printed
But branded on the front cover
Next to the word Perfection
And I’ll smile
Because I know that the true meaning of equality
Is the ability to fail miserably like the majority
The freedom of my best friend to marry the wrong man
Forgo marriage counseling
Get a divorce
And have everyone giving him shit for not leaving him sooner
Not for marrying a man in the first place
Dear somewhere in the grey area men,
Take your time
Revel in the very idea the unknown
And keep ‘em guessing
Because you know as well as I do
Watching them scratch there heads as you pass
Is a humble victory in it self
And I hope when you do find love
You will shout at the top of your lungs
Fuck a closet
Stand on a roof top
Inhale the anticipation
And exhale the beauty
That on this day
They can’t touch you
Even though you and I both know
They have never be able to
And we’ll smile
Knowing this is just beginning of a struggle
but we will embrace it
etch LOVE on our knuckles
knowing that we will not go quietly
we will not go passively and if they can’t except that
we will brand their hearts with our fists
and then kiss their foreheads
to show them that tough love does still exist in our world
and we won’t give up on them
because a wise man once told me to turn the other cheek
let them know we have no problem taking their lashes
because
battle wounds are sexy
and these men hold no weight in our world
ill leave you with this
smile at their snares
and wave back at their bigotry
because at the end of the day
there is nothing more beautiful than an unaffected smile
on a lover at midday
when sun is perfectly set in the sky
and no one can else can touch you
but then again
you and I both know
they never could
Soul Underfoot
Posted by Sruthi Sadhujan (Alumnus) | Filed under '09 Spring: Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
Some days… I smell of loneliness and escape,
of the uncomfortable intimacy of economy-class seats.
On these days, I scrub to take off that layer of dead skin,
hoping that if I rub hard enough, I can find traces of that person
that I once discarded from 30,000 feet high into the gulf of good intentions.
But sitting in an ocean of brown faces, all keen-eyed yet timid,
I felt the familiar restlessness of a 15-hour trans-everything flight,
the first voyage over, where every miles feels heavy under your eyelids,
as you try to put it all behind you.
They spoke of kathakali and crowded bus stands,
with passengers stacked like matchboxes,
sparking with urgency and escape.
One man told a story of a village of untouchables,
of a dog that wandered off
and impregnated another from an upper-caste family.
They torched that village,
raped and killed the first woman they could get their righteous hands on.
An eye for an eye, a dog for a rotten bitch,
these are the stories that move them,
these are the stories that appear in international newspapers,
but for all their notoriety and fame,
they’re standing neck-deep in stagnating water,
where the smallest ripple would drown them.
Because backward castes are equivalent to the very shit they scavenge through.
I looked over at the man, speaking with earnest and a quite rage.
Your eyes are hungering for moonlight,
and my heart cracked through the spaces of my split lips like parched earth,
ashamed to say that sometimes I dream of this place with pride.
I come from that far off land where mixed caste fetuses
are crushed one by one under the four legs of a bed frame.
Women are told to hold back their smiles,
because no one wants a rabid bitch to bear her teeth.
I know that you’re struggling, unable to reconcile the curious yearning in your chest
for the land that spat on your face because of the sound of your last name.
I belong to you,
I belong to a first son and his first child
with a mouth too big for much too small wallet.
to rice paddies floating with drowned lungs,
plastic bottles, and water-stained pleas,
I belong to a billion explosions of color between brown and ivory
I belong to the monsoons, to the color of my skin,
to women strung with jasmine garlands,
I belong to jai hind.
To communist graffiti on the walls of train stations
And groping blind beggars scraping like scalpels against the asphalt,
as if his knees were more courageous than he was.
I belong to him
To Kerala, Tamil Nadu…
And yet it seems that I will never belong but still…
I dream of you like the space between the fish and moon,
I belong to the place where they breathed, dreams expanding like balloons,
to the sun dying in the east.
I belong to a few, to a billion, I belong to you.
A Quantum Leap.
Posted by Chloe Wayne | Filed under '09 Spring: Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
Some nights, I lay alone and listen to opera.
The same song over and over again, a man and a woman-
I’m not really sure what they’re saying,
but there’s something about the way her voice rises…
wraps around his like ivy creeping up a stone spiral staircase to the heavens-
I imagine her singing of space and time unwinding
in obsidian whirlpools of his eyes,
of grandfather clocks with arthritic hands struggling to inch by,
dilating time – so they can grow old together, and then older.
I know nothing of 18th-century Italian,
but my mind shapes the contours of his heartstrings behind the melody,
and I think he replies-
‘I want to be the only one who knows
what the creaking of your elbows sounds like at sunrise,
let me hold your hand
and we’ll tightrope walk the equator,
then land safely in the familiar safety of our bedsheets.’
…I don’t really know what you think of me…
can’t quite sense the heat behind your lantern smile,
so if you won’t use its flicker to guide me,
I hope you don’t mind if I inch in a little bit closer.
See, I’d like to believe that real-life love must be as simple as it is for those two lovers,
storybook ending etched lifeline deep into Father Time’s palms-
but poets are only good at reading passion in pages and song
so hopeless romantic that I may be,
I can’t seem to read your mixed signals
no matter how often I play them on repeat.
I’ve been in love twice,
and learned that love is a four-ton pendulum
that sways to the fickle eight-count of two heartbeats
only to be knocked off-balance by distance or mistrust or wild oat sowing
or all of that other bullshit
that’s made every relationship I’ve ever witnessed
dangle precariously in the balance-
love, pendulum that it is,
but I’m just looking for someone to stand still with.
You…frighten me,
you hide behind jigsaw puzzle eyes,
you…with your ribs as window blinds-
I’ve never met a flower so afraid of the sun,
come undone,
be an unraveled stem -
spill the cherry blossoms from your gut
like red wine leaking from a paper cup-
’cause I know love comes and goes like the seasons,
but it’s springtime…
this mid-April breeze is feisty,
rustling its way through our clothes a little bit inappropriately.
The sun is shining like she’s got electromagnetic mascara for rays,
and I could have sworn, this morning, she batted her eyelashes your way.
It’s a time for flirting–
heartbreak and fear were so last season,
so today, I just wanna hold your hand.
Let’s be kids again, cavalier, unafraid of anything
but our own reflections in the mirror-
we’ll pretend its prom night,
and we’re fashionably late to a red carpet of rose petals,
firefly strobe lights and a dance floor of clementines.
Let me fashion my lips as rock climbers,
and I’ll scale the ridges of your cheekbones
then lay softly in the willow hammock of your dimples.
I just want to bite into this awkward silence like an overripe peach,
and have all those nervous conversations that we’ll laugh at when we’re thirty
and you’ve memorized the freckle coordinates on my skin,
and I’ve played cartographer to you,
mapped your blue Nile veins
and that meteorite scar tissue you keep shrouded
from every stranger in your stratosphere.
I’ve circumnavigated you for months,
but there’s something empty about living weightless -
so if you see a satellite in your skyline,
it’s me— I’m tired of hovering.
Just about ready for that quantum leap
so orient me,
compass-rose kiss a bag of wind in my direction.
Have it whistle me an opera.
