This post shall henceforth be completed only in smilies

:-/

:D

;)

O_o

XD

:)

:'/

:)

I think I may start writing again

I haven't written a poem in approximately five months. I go through cycles, I write in bursts like fireworks that die off and fade away to that silence that lingers until the next crack of gunpowder.

This isn't to say I'm brilliant or anything. Last semester I took a poetry class with Bruce Smith, who is a genius and writes beautiful poetry. I have two of his books in my bag, Mercy Seat and The Other Lover, alongside Stone Butch Blues and my own rag-tag poetry journal. I am bringing my journal to Massachusetts. I no longer write diaries, I diary in poetry.

Last semester in my poetry class I became certain that I was the worst poet in existence. I don't know if this is true. I think I have my moments, but then at other times my writing falls flat. I had a graveyard poetry phase. I am so morbid. I wrote a few pathetically sappy poems early last semester. Then they got bitter and angry. I don't know where they went after that.

In high school I wrote a sixty page story about a girl with schizophrenia. My mom worried that I had problems. In my senior year I wrote a short story about a house I visit in my nightmares. That was the assignment. Other people had the stereotypical creaking doors, noises in the hall, boogie men. I had walls that ran with blood. I had paintings whose eyes followed movement in the hallway. I had broken glass and suicide memories, I had cobwebs on silver, I had a ghost covered in tattered memories of clothes, I had little creatures who crept beneath the furniture. I had this actualization of a place that I once knew while I slept.

My teacher, Mrs. Root, wanted to send me to guidance counselling with the guidance counsellor who I just learned is a lesbian. My brother tells me I have no gaydar. This can be detrimental to my lifestyle, I think. Eric told me that now that he's with Johnny he might as well not be gay. I told him he's Johnnysexual. He would have put that in his profile if his parents didn't check it. I don't know what sexuality I am. Right now I don't know how much that matters. I'm like Eric. I have eyes for one only. We shall see where this leads.

I read my nightmare story to the class. One of my classmates threatened to beat me up if I didn't pursue writing. I do hope my major in English and Textual Studies is good enough for him. I've had friends threaten me harm if I didn't pursue art. To you folks, I am sorry. Know that I tried. I just can't stand sitting still for five hours, even if the people are generally naked. It's not a good payoff. And some of the models are scary in the nude. I do still draw when the inspiration strikes. My sketchpad is going with me to Massachusetts.

My writing goes through phases. My work sucked when I was a freshman and a sophomore in high school. This has something to do with my being naive at the time and not knowing myself. As a junior chemistry class bored me and so I took to writing poetry during chemistry. I think I did some of my best work when I should have been learning the periodic table. "Chemists do it on a table... periodically." I didn't write again until October of my senior year. Perhaps March. October and March are my best months. They are more romantic. March is romantic and October is eerie and my work follows suit. May is hopeful. June is content. July is lazy. August is just too damn hot for poetry. I think we should veto September completely. November is frost covered and delicate. December is sad about the past. January is not meant for poetry, nor New Years Resolutions. February is the month where I attack love and Valentine's day and romance. March again. March is my month for romance. I don't like April much. This year I think I like May a good deal. I may need to shift my romantic poetry to May.

I am forbidden to overuse the moon in my poetry. It's cliche. So are flowers yawning at the sky. I suck at poetry. I am cliche but my messages are not. Maybe the flowers aren't necessary to the message. Maybe I shouldn't try for flowers. I can't have broken mirrors in my poetry, but I can have them in the hallway at my old dorm. They don't reflect anything anyway. I can't have vastness because it's too broad, but when I come in close people can see through the words and into me. "I have shown in it the secret of my own soul." Ah, Basil Hallward, I feel your pain though I do not paint Dorian. I have no Dorian. That would be too presumptuous.

Oscar, you say create beautiful things but put nothing of yourself into it. I tell you that is not possible. Perhaps, I suppose, possible, but what is the worth of beauty without identity? What is the value of something beautiful and meaningless? You are ironic because you put so much of yourself into your stories and then warn not to put yourself in beautiful things. You live in your beautiful things, and they reproach you. Perhaps I need to put myself into beautiful things. Create again.

Why did I start this post? To say that I haven't written in five months and suddenly I feel inspiration gnawing at me and creeping closer. I wonder how best to describe it. Does it gnaw or creep or whisper? This has been an obscenely long post written for no reason in an incredibly presumptuous style. I presume people care, I presume I have talent, I presume that someone has ears.

I shall dub this the summer the summer for prose. I generally write non-rhyming lyric poetry. Or else I write pathetically horrid sonnets. I did a villanelle once. I hate structure. Prose, I think, would be a nice change of pace.

So, to conclude this epic post, I am back on campus for the day. I am updating my blog from the library. I am going to go watch a DocuDrag Production about Leslie Feinberg. I am going to pay my bookstore bill. I am going to take out gay books and try to buy S/he. I am going to fall asleep in the grass in front of the Hall of Languages and pretend I am laying beside a Wolf who is as nervous as I am. I am going to try and avoid helping Joan pack because I don't want to be helpful or work in the heat, but I do have to go say goodbye and take back my highheels. I am going to register for the class I didn't have time to register for earlier. I am going to change my mealplan from 14 meals and $120 bucks at kimmel to 5 meals and $580 bucks at kimmel. Fuck the dining halls. I may go lounge at Panesci.

Oh, right. I also need to go to a dining hall and eat something. Tina. Get the FOOD.

Monday Monday Monday

I miss my friends, but luckily we're going to galavant around town tomorrow. :D I'm excited. I leave in a week. I'm excited. I have a transman. I'm excited. My hair is black. I'm excited. The birds are singing. I'm excited. I'm cleaning my room. I'm excited.

Yes. I am so easily excitable.

:-*

Kiss that dyke, I know you want to hold one

Standing in line
To see the show tonight
And there’s a light on
Heavy glow
By the way I tried to say
I’d be there... waiting for
Dani the girl
Is singing songs to me
Beneath the marquee... overload

Steak knife caro shark
Con job boot cut

Skin that flick
She’s such a little dj
Get there quick
By street but not the freeway
Turn that trick
To make a little leeway
Beat that nic
But not the way that we play

Dog town blood bath
Rib cage soft tail

Standing in line
To see the show tonight
And there’s a light on
Heavy glow
By the way I tried to say
I’d be there... waiting for

Black jack dope dick
Pawn shop quick pick

Kiss that dyke
I know you want to hold one
Not on strike
But I’m about to bowl one
Bite that mic
I know you never stole one
Girls that like
A story so I told one

Song bird main line
Cash back hard top

Standing in line
To see the show tonight
And there’s a light on
Heavy glow
By the way I tried to say
I’d be there... waiting for
Dani the girl
Is singing songs to me
Beneath the marquee... of her soul
By the way I tried to say
I’d be there... waiting for

Chant

Standing in line
To see the show tonight
And there’s a light on
Heavy glow
By the way I tried to say
I’d be there... waiting for
Dani the girl
Is singing songs to me
Beneath the marquee... of her soul
By the way I tried to say
I know you
Looking for
Standing in line
To see the show tonight
And there’s a light on
Heavy glow
By the way I tried to say
I’d be there... waiting for

Minnie Bruce Pratt

"Husband"

At the March on Washington, the man sitting next to me on the grass asks "Is he your husband?" as I return from kissing you, as you step down from the microphone. On stage Peggy DuPont in beaded white chiffon is ferociously lipsynching and tailswitching a drag queen's answer to the introduction you have given her, praise from a drag king resplendent in your black-on-black suit. In the audience I hesitate over my answer. Do I change the pronoun and the designation of "husband"? Finally I reply, "Yes, she is." He hesitates in his turn: "He hasn't gone through the operation?" The complexity of your history crowds around me as I mentally juggle your female birth sex, male gender expression. I say, "She's transgendered, not transsexual." Up on stage Miss Liberty is reading, with sexy histrionics and flourishes of her enormous torch, a proclamation from a woman who is a U.S. Senator, a speech that trumpets and drums with the cadences of civil rights. The man blinks his eyelashes flirtatiously, leans toward me, whiskey on his breath, waves his hand at his companions, "We're up from North Carolina." Then, femme to femme, he begins to talk of your beauty: "He is perfect. If I ever wanted a woman it would be someone just like her." With innuendo and arch look he gives truthful ambiguity to what he sees in me, in you, something not simply about "gay rights." The queen whispers in my ear with his sharp steaming breath, "Don't let her get away. Hang onto him."

THINGS YOU CAN DO TO ERADICATE GENDER OR MULTIPLY IT EXPONENTIALLY:

*spend a day in drag
*write to organizations that call themselves "gay and lesbian" and ask them to change it to "queer"
*think twice before you ask people if their child is a boy or a girl
*have a conversation about the gender revolution with a friend while riding on public transportation. make sure you're overheard.
*join the transexual menace
*go to conferences like the Femme Gender Conference in San Francisco, OutWrite in Boston and meet other gender revolutionaries
*refer to everyone by the incorrect pronoun
*challenge the binary gender paradigm over thanksgiving dinner
*read a good book on gender liberation
*organize to get the diagnosis Gender Identity Disorder removed from the DSM IV
*refuse to check off your sex when filling out forms
*write about your experiences with the evolution of your own gender identity
*join mainstream lesbian and gay groups and speak up for transgender inclusion
*hang out with children and teach them how to cross dress barbie and g.i. joe
*support queer art with your time, talent, and money
*make art that explores gender
*talk to a femme dyke about how she experiences power through her gender identity
*experiment with new ways to accentuate your queerness using language, dress, movement, and of course, accessories.

Tina, come get some ham.

So I remembered the other thing I wanted to post. Last night I had this really fucked up dream that I broke into the zoo. I got into the lion's cage somehow, and then the lion handler was bringing the lion back and it started at me, but the lion handler quick used this contraption to keep him from getting me. But the contraption crushed his jaws.

I don't know exactly how to take it. Am I getting into things I shouldn't? Am I going to cause the eventual demise of the lion? Maybe I'm the lion. Maybe I need to be prevented from killing the part of me that wants to explore the lions den.

Tina, you fat lard, come get some DINNER!... Tina, eat. Food. Eat the FOOD!

This morning I missed my Psych exam, but was able to take it this afternoon at an alt time so I didn't REALLY miss it. I did miss my Gothic class tho. Showered, dressed quasi-faggishly and went to the last gay class.


NEWS!: Minnie Bruce Pratt is going to be a professor here next fall! I essentially told my current writing prof that I'd sell my left kidney to be in that class. I don't care what the topic is. So as soon as she knows details (like day/time) she'll let me know and I can register! Probably most of the gay writing class will sign up. Everyone is basically frothing at the mouth with excitement.

*froths with excitement*

I am exhausted. That is all.

I need this on a t-shirt to warn people

Aquarius (the water carrier) Jan. 21 - Feb. 19. unemotional. DETACHED. secretive. dogmatic. tactless. ANTI SOCIAL. ALOOF. obstinate. ECCENTRIC. insensitive. UNPREDICTABLE. perfect in every way.