how to be found

originally posted on great weather for MEDIA

 

how long until/ the limbs become/ just/ skin’s memory 

 

I travel west to contact every doorframe and window hinge I have ever touched. I want to know if they remember my fingerprint configuration. I need to know I am impactful.

In my pocket are three words I did not know before three days ago and one references a fruit I have trust issues with: aubergine. I contemplate renaming myself this word because I like the sling of its third syllable slapping tongue against roof of mouth. Is it ever too late to retitle oneself?

My mother calls me while I am pretending to write and she goes off script. She tells me my uncle has passed away. How long until a body loses its shape? And what shape does it become? Death lay there in his body for at least three days until. Until.

How to be found.          Out.

While living in suburbia, as a teenager with a license, I walked out of my psychology class one day with a mission to drive to my favorite park and hang myself. I was without weaponry, but I much preferred DIY techniques anyway. No one noticed when I walked out, right as the teacher—with three day beard or lipstick on teeth, I cannot recall—was offering a lesson on fight/flight and the biology of mental illness (or perhaps something completely unrelated). Slowly, I walked through the school parking lot to find my car, which really my sister’s, and it was red with only two doors. If I listened to the radio, I would have searched for Nirvana to scream his suicide notes into my ear.

This was the 90’s.

This park I liked was small, with evidence of duck excrement littering the ground like confetti. I did not care enough to watch where I walked; I just wanted to find the perfect tree to keep me elevated.

I ask my mother how he died and she does not know. I use a word like autopsy because of movies and over-saturated crime television programs like CSI and Law and Order. I need to know that even after addiction and depression, one finally reaches an age of understanding and stillness. I need to know I won’t want to revisit that tree with DIY weaponry when I am in my sixties.

I was fifteen when Kurt Cobain died. Less than one year later in 1995, I will try what he succeeded at, choosing pills and knives over shotgun. When Kurt died, everyone around me draped themselves in capes of flannel. When I die, I wonder if everyone will dye their hair red or just head to work because. Because. Why not.

On my travels west, I reach a doorframe found in an old school house, now called apartment complex. I licked the doorknob to see if it still tasted of me. All I can report is my tongue felt like pocket lint and pennies for the rest of the day. There was no sign of recognition.

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, an American commits suicide every 12.9 minutes. In the course of writing this, at least four people have died.

I ask my mother once again about an autopsy, sounding out each letter slowly. Don’t you want to know? I ask. But I know that I am really asking me.

The last song Kurt Cobain recorded with Nirvana was titled, “You Know You’re Right” and I wonder if we ever really do. The lyrics haunt like the loudest lover you never could get over.

Kurt growls, “No thought was put into this/ I always knew it’d come to this/ Things have never been so swell/ And I have never failed to fail.”

The tree refused to elevate me on that day I casually escaped the confines of high school. Instead, I carved my name into a bench that faced a manmade lake. I contemplated what I was contemplating. Almost twenty years later, I look up that lake on the computer, and find that it has a yelp page. People express joy for its vastness; a perfect place to picnic; a spot for fishing or handholding. I ponder submitting my thoughts on the trees and how they may have saved my life that day, when I might have contributed to the census of Americans who end their time. How many stars would I give and would I mention that I used to think this park was a perfect spot to die, but now I just think it’s the right place to remember how to be found.

good with words

Recently, a Rabbi called me a wordsmith. He knew me many years ago, when my hair was a different color. I was not much like this person I am now. I didn’t want him to recognize me, and I was quite pleased that he didn’t.

I read a short poem and words about mourning at a funeral for my uncle. Afterwords, once all the salt that sifted out from both eyes had dissipated, and I, longside five other men, took on the role of pallbearer, he said to me, “You are quite the wordsmith; you should keep at it.”

I smiled because he had no idea how much I needed to be reminded that I do. I smiled because my sister heard and she looked at me with pride.

This man of God, saying to me, a human who teeters on the edge of atheism, that I am good with words. 

On a Friday night, I sit wearing nothing but skin and remnants of sick still stuck to my flesh. I light a stick of incense and encourage the smoke to breathe me in, wrapping its seductive trail all over me. When one stick burns out, I light another. Inhaling this nag champa tickled my stuffed nose, but gathered me into a deeper mindset.

I began to think of the time my mother stormed my bedroom, and threw out all of my incense. She thought I had it because of drugs. She had no idea that I had yet to begin my thunderous battle with addiction; I just enjoyed the smell.

Even now, I like lighting these aromatic perfumed sticks not to mask any other smell, but to remind me to breathe in deeper. To get lost in the curls of smoke.

All I could say was, “thank you,” to the Rabbi, even though I wanted to say so much more.

I wanted to say to the Rabbi, “Do you remember me? I used to be blond and my parents liked each other. But you must see a lot of rotating marriages. It is 2015 and all.”

I wanted to ask him, “I know Jews don’t believe in heaven or hell and I don’t either but. But what do you think about a human who no longer feels comfortable in the body they were born into? There are words for this, but for me, those words don’t quite fit. And Rabbi?” I’d continue.

“Rabbi, what I mean to say is, I’m not so good with words when I need to use them to describe how this all feels. And also….” Here is where I will pause for such a long time, I will watch this scholar of Jewish law, get uncomfortable, and even impatient.

“…The thing is, maybe I just have a difficult time committing to letters. And designations. And clubs. And groups. And classifications. And stereotypes. And….”

The last time I went to synagogue, I sat, nervously reading prayers, translated into English. I was with my partner, who practices.

I practice to0. But not religion.

I practice how to be.

I just said thank you to this Rabbi who knew me before puberty and mental illness and trauma. I’m much better with words on paper; I’m just not so good with words when they want to come out. Sometimes, they just need more time to prepare.

dear lidia.

Dear Lidia,

I am bloodied.

He asks, “Paper or plastic,” and I choose noose.

Dear Lidia,

Somewhere between page five and the end, you mishandle my organs; I’ve put up four dozen MISSING posters all over Brooklyn in search of my lungs.

Dear Lidia,

My genitals have relocated themselves to my wrists behind misspelled tattoo and fourteenth scar. I rub them against humans shaped as time machines traveling me away from here.

Dear Lidia,

That photograph.

Dear Lidia,

How many ways can a child die and still breathe through teeth.

Dear Lidia,

I’ve lost track of all the mattresses which turned into monsters.

Even with all that flailing, I still count bed sores.

Dear Lidia,

The painter.

Dear Lidia,

That gun.

I’ve got a bullet hole beneath my right knee from that time that time that time.

Dear Lidia,

I’ve hemorrhaged out your ISBN.

Someone should have cradled my tongue before I castrated it.

Dear Lidia,

Napalm.

Dear Lidia,

The one with eyes, color of my childhood lampshade or emerald.

Dear Lidia,

The Vietcong man with the mosaic’d brain.

Dear Lidia,

My mother.

Dear Lidia,

Me, dressed as Charlie Chaplin, age 8.

Dear Lidia,

The photographed soldiers near Brooklyn Bridge, wearing masks to cover the missing in their faces.

Dear Lidia,

Each time I took my clothes off I became less of an onion and more like a shallot.

Dear Lidia,

How many languages speak the same version of ‘no’ and yet I an never quite master the accent on the right syllable.

Dear Lidia,

The writer.

There was that time that time that time that time.

Dear Lidia,

There is no such thing as a happy ending, even when giving a happy ending.

Dear Lidia,

The filmmaker.

Dear Lidia,

How to love.

Dear Lidia,

The womb.

Dear Lidia,

How to heal what rots what blooms.

Dear Lidia,

Did I ever tell you that I title my blood, war, because my body is in battle and yes, my cells rent their hunch to soldiers looking to punish my gender.

Dear Lidia,

I just. Can’t be. Girl. Anymore.

Dear Lidia,

I prefer to bag my own groceries because then I can understand the weight of ingredients and then it will be my city scum on potatoes and collard greens and then I will be reminded of all the ways

one attempts

to live.

dear rebel (with regards to dressing the dead)

Dear Rebel,

Here is what you asked of me. You asked me to think about love. Then a body without dressing. Then death. Then words to send this person out with.

I think of gauze. The word and the cloth.

I think of a handkerchief to sop up the salt coming from me. Dripping onto the body. Creating a reflection of water one could not possibly swim in, but a lifeguard will still be needed to catch the ones who try.

I think of a zipper. To hold in what tries to flee.

“Be still,” I will say, even though there is nowhere for a body to move when it is no longer living. “Be still as I dictionary your skin.”

[I use this noun as a verb because it feels more like an action to inscribe every word and its meaning onto flesh that may no longer breathe, but it listens. It may no longer respond, but it imprints.]

“Be still,” I repeat once more.

I think of blood. I think of all the blood I extracted from my body. Wasted it onto bandages and hiding places. Now, I can’t even donate what I’ve got; it’s too tarnished and tongue-tied.

I think of that time I went with a friend when she wanted to donate her blood. I was jealous that hers was better than mine. Afterward, she let me eat the cookie and drink the juice they gave to her. I still have that pin, shaped as a drop of blood, that she gave me after giving.

I think of my friend, the oil painter named Lindsay, who asked me what is really meant by “the one” when love is mentioned. She questioned the validity of a soul mate. I think we have many ones….the ones who mate with our souls in that moment. And when they are gone, we change. And when we meet another, they become the one for that time.

I think that some moments last thirty-seven years or just two years or just a few hours.

 

***

Dear Rebel, we are meant to write. We are meant to wake up writing. We are meant to wake up questioning this as well.

When I was in Nebraska, I thought about all the ways I’ve been hiding myself. I took drugs. I had promiscuous sex. I lied. I denounced. I painted my skin in toxicity in order to scare away the ones who wanted to breathe against me. In Nebraska, I tried a different pattern of breathing. In Nebraska, I learned how to play brave. In Nebraska, I dictionary’d my soul.

I also think of music in the key of C minor.

a grim arithmetic

“It is not a matter of words for things. Rather it is a matter of distance between the word and the thing” (Nathalie Stephens).

It is not a matter of the limbs of speech, rather the foliage growing from it. 

1. Pasts are like bones. They grow and rip shards of internal bruising from within. When is the right time to disrobe. When is the right time to tell a new lover about the time you _______ or _________ and how about when you used to ____________ and almost ________ because of  ____________. My baggage is mismatched and crumbled. It has been stolen and lost, but always finds its way back to me with pieces missing.

2. Sole mate < or = to soul mate. There is so much fear in learning how to kiss a new mouth. Some lips are dressed in whale fat and others are waxed and peppermint’d. I can love beyond the parts. What I search for now is to find another who sees beyond mine.

3. Stop asking what she is. It is not always one answer; it is not always a word that has been assigned sound.

4. I desperately held onto love as though it could just exist through and with one person. And then, I met another. And then another after that one. When we think love is gone, there is (always) another human breathing up earth…on their way to you. Just inhale and be ready.

5. Pass (verb) 1 move or cause to move in a specified direction:/ change from one state or condition to another: . / die (used euphemistically):/ go past or across; leave behind or on one side in proceeding: / go beyond the limits of; surpass; exceed:/ come to an end……../ / / It does not always have to be this or that. There is so much empowerment in the “other” and in the “in between” exploration of all sides. When I bind [some of my] parts, I am just trying to allow room for silence. Beyond the masculine, there are syllables that have no gender.  [I’ve spent over three decades trying to pass and I am just now figuring out that none of it made sense for a reason.]

6. Everything that came before today is a rorshach’d survival stain. That is, memories are like lovers; they never really leave us.

7. How to love or lust away from what hides behind zippers and skin.

8. Do not wait for death to remember them.

9. Before supper, burn fragments of what must be left behind and what needs to remain.

10. Gorge on the kindled harassment of stanzas that question every entity on [your] skin; this is what happens when the only thing left to distract are pronunciated infernos.

pack tiny stones in[to] precarious burst of my.

“take my right arm/where it was blown off/and set it in your sleeve”   –Meena Alexander

pass by the one wearing shoulders. threaten sleep by clinging eyes closed. i am curds, poached over rocky mountains. i am daniel, too distressed for a middle. i saw married and skinny. i ate october and not-quite 2am. if there is another, call me stone. place me near western waters in canada. even fingernails have a difficult time with closure: they keep extending until. mud casts a supporting role in this. and there is a walk-on cameo by analogous joints that used to bend inward. most of the time, these are poems. and so it is. some of the time, they are love letters to the ones I stutter against. there was that one time, it was a declaration of itch and bother. where is the carnage of your tongue after it windmilled beneath mine. just just just look past the mold and yellow lists spine’d on plastic shelf and remember that even in death, we are [all] just trying to catalogue the caskets build into our bodies.

there are oranges in the sky and they are seedless

It can be difficult to wake. Dreams are heavy like ten thousand words, typeset into body.

When there is another beside you, it can be easy to remain in bed. They hold you as though your organs will flail if they let go. Their smell is so familiar but when the sun lets loose in the sky, you must unfold and drift up.

Mornings can be a reminder of the day before or several years earlier when you had a porch and pup. Or when you floated boxed-wine in icy lake in the woods when camp-out lasted several days and home was referred to as: beyond the highest trees and past the boulders and before the mountain.

The bowl of fruit in the sky is ripening. There are kiwi and mandarin oranges and bananas and pomegranates and a few mangoes. We can call that other one tropical or traveled. There is so much to be eaten: humans & harvests & even the histories we collect.

It may be difficult to go on sometimes. What I mean is, sometimes death feels erotic and loving. How to tumble away from that ledge because here in the city, fire escapes are collapsing. Sometimes the sky sends out smoke signals to warn of this collapse; sometimes the sky forgets to notice.

the religion of this.

Tell me how it feels to be looked at like that. When your paint is so dramatic, eyes step beyond the taped line. Risk of getting thrown out of museum is worth it just to see that tiny hair– trapped for one hundred and eighty years– caught up in lonely greens and browns. Contemplate how that human called your body’s origin: a violin. What are your parents. What color are you if I dripped you open. We can be allegories on this earth as everything in sight tilts toward our fright. Let’s pretend we only just started to exist. They called my blood stained glass, bent fingers into each other, prayed toward my carbon dioxide. Today, I give away four tablespoons of urine to analyze all the haunts that have ghosted their way in. What is so spiritual about discharge. Owls and graveyards and ruin and I dreamed I had to explain why my wrists have blurred. How to mute the dread of tomorrow, which reeks of the day before and the one which will arrive two days from now. And taciturn and monsoon’d. There is a motif for prayer and it looks like a four-stringed instrument & curled voice of poet pretending how to live. Wonder about monks. Wonder how to rely upon four minute allowance of dress and razor and mercy and water strainer and needle. Wonder how to practice abstinence of appetite, while abstaining from all practices of celibacy. And if one cannot be holy in its intimate form, how to be a hummingbird.  Forage shade as though it can be eaten and when all of it is gone, sleep inside the orthodoxy of dark.

“today I talk myself into staying”

This freedom is ugly. It is blistered, having walked for centuries; there is no remedy for this ugliness. How to survive in a world where pigment is a devastation, forcing other hues back into the soil or behind bars.

Poets gather to memorialize another from their tribe, while on the other side of this city, Humans gather to stomp out the reek of atrocity. What is the scaffold of race. How sturdy is its wreckage. Carve us out of these bodies and our bones are of the same dimension. Why must skin create such a need for weaponry?

Up north, another young one dies because its body grew magnetic as breaths grew lured by drugs. In moments right before death, we may contemplate our past path. There are bathtubs and trees and sharps, but weapons go beyond the ones we point and click…..

I almost died once. And then again that other time and the one before that. And then there was that most recent trip. But I remain because I am employed to this body. It is my boss, my co-worker, the chief executive operator, the secretary and treasurer, the president. There is no paycheck beyond the currency of laughter, health, deep-rooted learning, love and lust, sight, taste and smell and and and.

Sometimes there is a moment when we feel the need to search for exit signs. Or, we see another who does not look the way we look and it confuses us. We are biased against one another; we are biased against ourselves. We loot and rummage and there is so much destruction that we often forget to notice the moments of beauty: swirling of skin that may be different than our own but still tastes the same and still speaks in music notes and poetry.

I am saddened by the thinness of freedom in this country on this continent in this world. Bodies are bloated and yet liberty is starved. I want to weep for the ones who are serving time for crimes they did not commit; I want to weep for the ones who are not held captive but need to be; I want to weep for the ones we vigil for.

Today, I am trying to talk myself into staying. 

tilt your naked toward the ugly and squeeze out reformation

Much of it begins out of something else. You read it; you noticed it on a Tuesday stuck inside that book everyone has been telling you to pick up. You captured it inside the fist of your pupil, punching the air with that dust-collecting stare.

It started like a dribble of compare.

He spoke it in his language, which was yours until they frightened it out of you.

In order to go on, turn body into the only carnival ride you could commit to. Like carved-out pills or shy spaceships, they call it tilt-a-whirl. Shake out your biology, your apologies, the startled cause of your sick.

Forget the fur and wool, step into plaster and caulk. You may only be kissed when the wind storms away the layers of your lips from the past seven years.

It’s not that you’re ugly. You just don’t have enough symmetry to warrant air-brushing and notice. Take travel-sized sewing kit to the death in you and seam-rip it away.