the urgency of risk.

Dear Rebel,

You urge me to write. Urge is defined by a seizure of  light in one’s body. It elevates one’s fingers to touch something or create something. Urge is a language of intimacy and conversion. Urges include digestion of vitamins and elements from soil. An urge can be placed beneath the curl of another’s hand. An urge can be an invitation of words. 

Rebel, I am eight days into this new age and something has dramatically shifted. No, it is nowhere near self-actualization, but closer to acceptance. I sleep outside of my nude now. I sleep alone most nights. I sleep with chest flattened by cotton press of yellow-yolk contraption. I sleep beneath the invisible constellations on my ceiling. I sleep wearing ten thousand genders like colorful kites tangled up in my torso. I sleep motionless; I sleep like a Pina Bausch dancer choreographed into whispered shoulder rolls.

There is an urgency for love. To find the map that completes my location. To pave the roads of my soul with the concrete from another. To close every drawer and cover each exposed shelf to make room for another. An urgency to move on. Last month, you made love to a river and I found (continue to search for) the complacency of my blood. We address our parts as revised elocutions. Urge others to do the same to make room for variants. There is no one way to this beyond breath.

an ejaculation of visibility

This may have been the longest journey of my life. Searching through the wreckage of memories and indentations to decipher what it means to be beautiful.

At a local cafe, I still taste red velvet cake on my tongue as I leaf through discarded “men’s magazine” with blond-haired breasts woman on the cover. The theme of this issue is: America’s favorite things.

I searched for:
peanut butter
black ink pilot pens
summer rain storms with rainbows at the end
love affairs
french-pressed coffee

All I saw were various breasts attached to similarly shaped/hued women wearing strings and strips of fabric.

Tomorrow night, I undress my mind and attempt to translate an array of memories and movements in a show called: ejaculating beauty

For over a year, this performance piece has been formulating on various sheets of paper, and within these past few months, I have begun to fully understand its meaning.

What is my first memory of beautiful?

Growing up, it was always about my hair, which was slightly less red and what some may have defined as…….dirty blond. It was long and curly, and had I not been so restless, I may have had a future in shampoo commercials.

My grandmother begged me never to cut it. But. If I ever did, to save it and give it to her.

Strangers would tell me how beautiful my hair was.
Everyone wanted to touch it.

I was being upstaged by my follicles.

So, I did what any sane person would do, remove the part of me that got all the attention.

I thought: If my hair is gone, they will notice my words more.

When I cut my hair, something shifted in me. I realized I had been hiding behind it. Once it was gone, all of me was visible. Or, it felt that way. So, I began to cut other parts of me in order to sever the screams on my skin that only I seemed to notice.

None of this was very helpful.

A lover tells me I am beautiful, but this word has been so misused that it is difficult to gather up its intentions and accept it.

Airbrushed faces on magazines and billboards are called beautiful.
That woman on the 4 train with exposed bones and belly, flatter than the paper I write on, is called beautiful.

I call the earth beautiful, sometimes.
On days where trees reenact a Pina Bausch movement.
That moment she found a heart-shaped rock on the beach in western B.C., amidst thousands of others.
The feeling I get when first drip of coffee teases my tongue and slides down my throat.

This is beautiful to me.

I am trying to be visible in a way that re/defines what beauty even means.

I am covered in mosquito bites.

Beautiful?

(I’ve been told) one breast is slightly larger than the other.

Beautiful?

I’ve got freckles on my skin from too much sun and not enough sunscreen.

Beautiful?

I’m emotional and unsettled and moody.

Beautiful.

dance because it is all that is left to do

A woman risks paralysis as moan of body leans toward pavement/ Dancer catches her boarded-up bones before the crash arrives.

In an air-conditioned movie theatre, a huddle of purchased attention spans.
Black licorice unpeeled from non-recycled materials slithers into mouth.
Laps press together to make room for more ticket holders.
Woman complains of noisy rocking chair. Calls it a bed without the comfort.

A German enters wearing illumination and a cigarette. She is projected from three dimensional memory.

How to structuralize gender?

the strength of illusion and mobilized bodies/

What is the rhythm of water?

to dance with the vigor of a flood eating away an entire village/

/
/
On the other side of a movie screen, a man recruits women for sport. Chronicles their measurements and pairs them up in size/breast/genital order. The next day, he is found with his tongue removed due to improper fondling. How necessary are cages for men who behave like improper beasts. Must we dance them away with the grace of carved heels plunged into their chests. Why do some chromosomes have the rhythm of murder weapons.

Later on, a woman resembles a church bell, leaning back and forth with paper cup clutched between palms, empty as her belly. Coins have no nutritional value and (sometimes) acknowledgements are enough to last through one more day.

/
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If she is sad (enough), carry her. Transform spine into tabletop and utilize strength of knees to travel her away from the sorrow.

Death does not need to be planned, traced with chalk and blood clots, in order to occur.

Sometimes, it is just as easy to slip one’s self into splintered chairs or window frames or dining room tables and….and….disappear.