Democratic Republic of the Congo: regarding current events

Say Goodbye

Fingers touching
ringing
tasting of salt-sweat
and dust.
Fingers touch
and feel
this life is real;
this is the world.

A human chain
across the earth
extending beyond flesh--
the dirt on my feet--
that carries me over
deserts.
Walking on fire.
Walking over grassy fields
exposed
as massive graves.

Children lie below me
beautiful, black, babies,
innocent and trusting
reach to me with severed
limbs
buried under shallow dust--
shadows of rust--
like etches of eyes and faces
different races
racing to secure
something more
(machetes and gore).

I am helpless
beaten to the floor.
They step on my back
pull my arms
and bind me with
wire,
cutting like fire.
I
feel
wounded.


Words

These are some words
for the weeping fathers
and mothers
whose hearts have been
pierced.
Flesh of flesh
and blood of blood,
taken by harmful hands:
thirsty,
greedy,
blinded by scales,
blinded by rage,
blinded by affliction--
chemical and human.

These are some words
for those who
call on gravity
to pull their children
back from the grave of
captivity,
who cry to God to
make their daughters safe
from rape
and bitter beatings,
who cry to God to
keep their sons free
from mental manipulation
their eyes from devastation.

These are some words
for all who say
in the dead of night
"come home"
--through tears and
tortured dreams--
"come home"
--as morning pours
like streaming drops--
"come home"
as years choke by
like heaving sobs.

These are some words.


Stain

They say it's
magic oil
that they
slick into my skin:
across my heart
--to stop from feeling,
across my forehead
--to stop from thinking,
across my back
--to stop from resisting,
across my feet
--to stop from running.
Magic oil,
they say,
will make me forget
my family,
embrace abuse,
turn away and
kill or be killed.
This magic oil
will sooth me
into this life,
anoint me from the weakness of my
child's stomach.
This magic oil
didn't
work.
Because I wiped it straight off.

Riddle: What's my name and phone number?

Raindrops flitting from the cloud splotched sky
air
chilly breath from the earth
hundreds of icicles clinging
anticipating gravity's fall
everywhere still--
light lingers thoughtessly.

Pine needles break like tinkering glass
ice
nector of the season
enter into Demeter's bliss
inch the sun's rays, tilt the earth's axis
rake the earth clean
of everything frozen.

Celine Dion Irrationally Enrages Me

Drops on the window
Ice fills the
cracks of the sidewalk
the cracks in my hands.
The mud is soft
but cold.

I wear the mud
on my clothes
across my face
in my mouth.

I am a princess.
Disheveled--
Chagrined--
to the bone.

The worth of words
seduces and eludes me.
If alphbets tasted like crackers,
I'd eat them.
Up.
I'd eat them up.

An Excess of Voice and Ghost of a Flea

Something my professor said today kind of made me sad.

He described our society as the inverse of William Blake's society in pre-romantic England. Nobody expressed their creativity. Imagination was not a prized function of society--in fact, imagination often got people locked up. Had more people actually read Blake during his life, he most certainly would have been locked up--if not beheaded. (Blake would often stop whatever he was doing and gaze into nothingness, saying he was observing something--like the ghost of a flea--and then he'd quickly sketch it on his cuffed sleeve. See http://www.phespirit.info/pictures/patchwork/p008.htm for this sketch)

In our society, my professor pointed out, everyone expresses themselves. Everyone pours out their hearts in a blog and nobody cares. There is an excess of voice.

You might see why this troubled me.

Web

A translucent web of complex connections and centrifugal notions exists between my own brain, and those other minds I have grappled with. Professors, bosses, speakers, lovers—those I've had live conversations with, but those minds, also, that have lived on, long after the decay of their actual matter. Emerson. Thoreau. Fuller. Blake. I stumbled—-mostly blind—-through the tangle of English courses and was surprised to find myself inhaling the sticky philosophy of the “Over-Soul” and spiritual manifestation in the material. Trapped in the glistening fibers of long woven articulation, I fought arduously to understand the fashion of my binds, to discover from whence it came, where it was going, and the figuring in between. (The figuring, of course, is easier to speculate at, then to actually chew. The dizzying illumination of metaphor and allusion helps to taste transcendental thought, but can also intimidate, with the overwhelming saturation of syntax).
I have learned that there is much to learn—from both minds past and present. I can remember an instance when I was 6 years old. I struggled to make light of the cryptic words on a VHS tape. I brought it to my Abuelo, who did not speak English with ease. With heavy Cuban pronunciation, he read “Charlotte's Web,” but I failed to grasp the meaning of his words. Despite our closeness in relation, our minds were separated by a stretch of sixty years and blocked by the barrier of language and a fading culture. I understand, now, the necessity of branching one's web to include the wider array of human thought and understanding, as there is an infinity of human spiritual growth. The interconnectedness of minds and relations, when knit together, may bind all of humanity into a great unification of understanding.

I'd never do elementary school over.

The lunchroom was an echoing chamber of dread. By the time the bell buzzed and my rattling nerves acknowledged the lunch hour, I experienced a mixed sensation of relief and tension. Relief because my stomach felt pangs of hunger (and had begun making those funny dinosaur roars) and tension because I recognized the tyranny of the social hierarchy—of which I was quite near the bottom. Walking into the gymnasium-like cafeteria was like a different kind of dodge ball. Rather than actual lumps of rubber pelting my bony 8-year old flesh, the battery of snooty glances, cutting statements, and cold indifference razed my sensitivity. A cacophony of voices bounced off the cement-block walls and square-grid floor—a mixture of varying levels of high pitched voices, laughter and random bellows. The social pressure smushed me like play-dough into a cowering bunny-rabbit. Clattering trays were background noises as I shrunk onto a yellow circle seat on the very end of a deserted rectangle table. Eyes glued to my squishy lunch box, I hoped that no one would see me. If nobody saw me, they might accidentally sit by me, and other people wouldn't think I'm a loser. Inside my pony lunch pail was a mixture of scents—plastic, peanut butter, cookies, and milk. Relief. No tangy whiff of egg-salad sandwich. If I had an egg salad sandwich I would zip it back up and banish it to the garbage when no one was looking. Egg-salad sandwiches meant scathing shame. Freakishness. Smelliness. Nobody—nobody­--ate egg-salad sandwiches or even knew what one was. Egg-salad sandwiches tasted good when Mommy made them at home but tasted like humiliation at school.
I felt a tug from the table signifying the weight of another human being upon a circle seat. More tugs. More kids. I felt the warmth of a body next to me. Braving a glance, I saw that it was a boy. Suddenly, I didn't want to eat my peanut butter and jelly sandwich any more. I peeled off the crust and nibbled my cookies, instead.

Some love will always be unrequited.

CLARA
I can't take it anymore. I won't take it any more. I've waited so long—I think I'm going to die. Yes, I will die if I don't do it now.
(Pause while she gathers courage and takes a deep breath)
Jeff! JEFF HARTKISS!

Jeff realizes he is being addressed. He moves away from his group of friends and tentatively approaches Clara.

CLARA
(with passion)
Jeff—Jeff Heartkiss—I love you. I love you most ardently—passionately, irrationally, and quite obsessively. I've loved you for three weeks and my heart is yours forever.

JEFF, stunned, has no idea how to react.

CLARA
I first realized it in our Environmental Earth Science class. You sit two rows behind me and three seats to the left of me. That's why I always have my mirror out—so I can watch you. I watch you all the time and I've fallen in love with the way you chew on the end of your pencil when you're thinking and the way you lean your cheek against your clenched fist when you're dozing. So many times have I desired to stroke that cheek. You have no idea how difficult it is for me to stay focused in that class when I have your god-like reflection in the palm of my hands...
(Breathing deeply, CLARA is momentarily too distracted to continue)
Until six days ago I deemed our love to be unrequited, but then, while you were walking to the garbage can to spit out your gum, you brushed up against me...you must know what that touch did to me...you must! You felt it too! I see that blush bepainted upon your cheek! You can't deny the sexual tension fizzling between us.
(Dropping to her knee, CLARA belts)
WE SHOULD BE LOVERS!
(Speaking with reckless abandon)
I want to have your babies. I have never wanted to have a baby before—you are the first man to make me feel like this. For you, I would endure the freakish process of childbirth. I see that you are blushing even more now. Don't worry, I understand, darling. I blush, too, when I think about us together...having—picnics. And feeding ducks together.
(Laughing nervously)
You are feeling so much passion right now, you almost appear to be furious. That gleam behind your eye. How peculiar. It almost seems sharp and spiteful.
(Pause as CLARA bores her stair into JEFF's eyes)
Oh my gosh...you hate me.
(Jerking with the realization)
YOU HATE ME. Jeff Heartkiss, you were supposed to return my love—by every fricking rule of romance—I was so vulnerable.

JEFF, mortified, glances about to see which of his friends were eaves dropping. He shoots CLARA a gaze of disgust and revolt. CLARA slaps JEFF across the face.

CLARA
(Struggles to understand)
Why would you not love me after all I said? I offered to have your babies. I just don't...understand.
(With strength)
You are a jerk. Your heart is stone and you are an obtusely self-centered dumb-ass if you think you can do better than Clara Casmen.
(Suddenly nauseated by his mere sight)
Get your ugly mug away from me and sulk some place else, you infectious knave.