1. |
Lindsay Lohan Was Right
01:41
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LINDSAY LOHAN WAS RIGHT
Lindsay Lohan was Right, High School's like a jungle
I hit the 9th grade, my hair fell like Rapunzel.
Melancholy. Rocking that grunge still.
Springtime daffodils sprouting buds into nipples.
But it's all good, we grow on our own.
Saxophone to guitar, I found my love in pen and paper
Words can be seen or heard, Burned or preserved and unearthed in the future
to unsuture the stitched lips of every queer high-schooler.
Every kid that didn't fit in.
Wearing our skin misfitted. Our loneliness half-witnessed.
This is proof of our existence.
Two 11-yr-olds hung themselves in 1 month
& I'm repeating the names Carl & Jaheem as I slumber.
Broken heart, that epic double entendre,
were where you get’s not at all where we wanted.
And I'm haunted by the lack of responses when children tie knots
become skeletons in our closets.
Witness jaws drop. Repeat their stories to my mom.
Ask that she cradles their souls in her arms.
Hope the next life is kinder. Tell this story to remind y’all that
Lindsay Lohan was right, it’s a freakin’ jungle
And Ferris Bueller was right, the days what you make of.
I am what I am because I was, yea I was barely recognizable to my adult persona
Black and blue hematoma. numb self-induced-coma
no accidental overdose, went from loner to lonely ghost.
A Casper unrehearsed. Host of my own roast.
Filled with self-hatred and praying not to be noticed.
But two big toes dipping deep end
Went from sinking to sailing through each days beginning.
Now looking back on those days like remember when.
Now talking to youth like hold strong to your truths
Your anger is valid. I've seen through the clouds and resound in the fact
that it's beautiful we fall on repeat
Only to rise again and feel the pavement running circles under our feet
Your fragility is human. You deserve to be loved.
And Ferris Bueller was right…The day's what you make of.
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2. |
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WHEN I WAS 14 I WAS CLOSER TO FINE
When I was 14, I was Closer to Fine
Had an Untouchable Face, was 32 Flavors and then some.
My jungle was filled with rubyfruits
My AOL Chat Room of choice? Women to Women.
The Indigo Girls were the first gay people I knew
They helped make the well less lonely.
At an Ani show in Miami, the AC broke and it got so hot
that women tore off their shirts and bras and went topless.
I was surrounded by boobs and danced myself to heat exhaustion.
I was inconsolable when Angel died.
I cried myself to sleep and dreamt of her scooping me up in her pickle tub & saving me.
Once a week, I practiced my 9-1-1 speech.“I don’t want to die” I’d say,
“I just want some sleep. Wake me up before the darkness consumes me.”
Every day I dreamed of running away
I was a cry for help in the most textbook of ways.
Every year I felt every one of those 525,600 minutes.
My favorite mix-tape had a Sark quote on it. I was uncool way before it was hip.
If I could speak to that old me now, I’d remain silent.
I had 3 necklaces with pride rings. I bought them all with my best friend Ali on St. Marks Street and tucked them discreetly under environmental T’s.
It hurts my heart when people get too cool for their own histories.
I cried at the end of “When Night is Falling” every time. At 17, Pat Carten kissed me.
She looked just like Jenny Shimizu and had a lip piercing and thought I was beautiful for all the reasons I knew I was ugly and I sang “ I Kissed a Girl” until my voice got hoarse and my parents stopped believing I was happy.
I believed in the Tooth Fairy until I was nearly in middle school.
A year later, I’d be giving hand jobs
and smoking shitty weed in Taco Bell parking lots.
I bought a top hat and toyed with the idea of going Goth.
I loved Nirvana but couldn’t Come as I Was.
I smelled like Teen Spirit and Bath and Body Freesia.
I bought a guitar. Serenaded my mom in minor chords singing “You’ve got a fast car…”
For years I didn’t know whether to be a clown or a trucker.
Nobody seemed to notice I flinched when touched.
I was the only one of my friends who knew how to ride the bus.
I looked up to older Lesbians and thanked them for their courage.
I read Stone Butch Blues cover to cover.
18-year-olds now have never heard of Matthew Shepard but I’m confident one day they’ll be able to marry their lovers.
It saddens me when my own community fights against gay marriage legality.
Forgetting the most radical acts have been fought in the name of equality.
We’ve spent enough time fighting each other, let’s try solidarity.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get married but I’ve already planned the entire ceremony.
There’ll be a barbershop quartet leading us out to the hit tunes of Doris Day.
My parents stopped fantasizing my wedding by the time I hit puberty.
We’re all weird kids. At 14 my parents went out of town and I took clippers to my scalp. I ate a whole pizza and puked most of it out.
For years my fingers wandered past the ridges of my hard palate.
At 13, my aunt got me a subscription to Sassy Magazine.
I took YM quizzes in a search for possible self-identities.
I watched My So Called Life and longed to kick it with Angela and Ricky.
I thought Claire Danes should dump Jared Leto, sneak into the boiler room to meet me.
We wouldn’t make out or anything.
We’d just like talk about our, like, budding identities.
Pedro was the bravest person on television.
When he died, I felt proud to have known him.
He never knew me. At 17 I came out to my mom because the doctor said she was dying.
Got a fake ID at sixteen. Saw my dentist the first night at the gay bar
and developed a phobia of dental hygiene.
Wasn’t born with all my adult teeth.
Still chew on baby molars but was 29 before I got my first cavity.
And there’s a metaphor in there. And in everywhere else. And in everything.
Quantum mechanics states that in the same time and place
there’s a baby Queer in me that both did and didn’t make it.
One that faded and one that followed Hemmingway when he said
“We’re strong in our broken places”. I give us both names.
Make the one that didn’t survive my spirit guide.
My parasitic twin with extra limbs from my gut to hold me up
or wrap around me when I want nothing more from this world than human touch.
To tap me on the shoulder and remind me that more than once you’ve saved yourself.
More than twice you relied on strangers and denial
And that sometimes living a lie is akin to survival.
So I go back in time, and release the bourdon of responsibility
of protecting the former me.
I throw up my truths and let gravity determine the weight of my youth.
Then I add to the lucid by subtracting the delusions.
I separate what divides me and you
And multiply life by the Power of Two.
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3. |
Nomadic
04:06
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NOMADIC
While I was Nomadic, 7 years disappeared.
My body re-engineered.
She fell in love with somebody who isn't me
Who lives far away, but hey, at least she don't leave
While I was nomadic, The vegetables rotted,
as did the plants potted.
And now in my own city I feel like a foreigner
Spent too much time searching for that magnetic north
Count the years, more than 5. The tread of some 10-20 tires
The tired that comes with repetitive sunrise
The limp rise from a stranger’s fuck,
and stranger still, the search for something yet untouched.
I saw the Autumn leaves before almost anybody else I know this September.
I was driving I-70 East in and out of West Virginia
and you just turn a corner and you are there, falling in love with the end of summer.
Anticipating the changes coming, Age stunted by the running
And there's something about country-crossing during periods of season change
With Saturn nipping day by state at your wings that leaves you questioning the strength of your feet.
It took only one week.
But while I was gone, the Pennsylvania leaves began to bronze dropping their yellow fingers to comfort the dying blades of grass on suburban lawns.
Almost every highway in this country I've drove on.
A million miles of asphalt passed, and still, this is my first love poem.
Almost every word I've ever written was wrote down while in motion.
While I was nomadic, heart became where home isn't.
I left my compass in the shadow of my electronic GPS
Pressing back, back, back, view map.
Checking off turns in a long list of least direct.
And again, I'm Gretel on the move
Dropping hindsight morsels of regret I leave to mark my missteps
And I'm tripping on the apologies that come with following your dreams.
Please.
I can't tell you how sorry I am, to my friends, to my fans.
I don't come around enough. Always sadness weaved into my new stuff.
I’ve been selfish. Every picture a self-portrait.
Every conversation an import taxed at the door.
An awkward business you dismiss as the cost of listening.
And you do it over and over again. Allowing me to do what I love for a living.
How do I show you due gratitude?
You picked up my frayed bits and built nests to ease the fall of failing altitude.
I never meant to disrespect you.
There's rarely a moment I ceased the mantra of “Fuck, I meant to call you.”
I've been distracted by the ease of listening only to my own breathing.
While I was nomadic, I missed my brother turning 30
but beared witness to the birth of over two dozen seasons.
While I was nomadic, I began believing in this:
My God exists a triton split of faith, inner-conscience and coincidence.
Don’t need Jesus or minions.
I've testified every close call slip on asphalt
Cadenced my confessionals to strange footsteps in bathroom stalls.
In the west the highway's a corridor.
I want to grasp the hands of the ones I love around the girth of a giant sequoia.
Until the bark grows over. Until this anxious pace dissipates.
Because it's a rat race really.
The spinning of the earth keeping us grounded to the dirt.
We're products of centrifugal force and last October we sent a missile to the moon and declared war on our anchor.
As a poet, it's hard not to see the metaphor.
As a Pisces it's hard not to dream of anti-gravity.
Because I've done summersaults in the sea
and the sensation's always settled better
than combining words like roots and feet.
The bees are disappearing.
The moths succumbing to the tired that comes with circular flight towards lunacy.
They are winged creatures and they are my simile.
See I don't think I can ever stop moving.
But it is a well-documented fact that one day I'll lie down and forever sleep.
And every moment I've ever lived will become hearsay after that last heartbeat.
And all those times I've spent alone… free of witness testimony and owner.
Returned to the road,
The long phonics of growth,To be recollected by poets
in spiral notebooks on dominant knees.
And how sweet. That release. Of language will be.
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4. |
Landing Strips
01:57
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LANDING STRIPS
Her thighs became landing strips for record skips and nectar drips.
There were sweat beads like dew drops
and thoughts of her hands touring the lands of my torso and below
Skin is the body’s largest organ.
Bazillions of epithelial cells that sense pressure
before temperature, pain, or pleasure.
Ribs, neck, fingers clench the hair, the sheets, the silicone parts of me.
Science meets fantasy.
The palms of hands meet the backs of knees, the soles of feet.
Midnight meets three meets five.
How many nights like this have ended in sunrise? with limp arms.
There are 4 stages of the human orgasm and the final stage isn't the climax,
It's the relax.
The lay back and feel the pit-pat restack between sternum and back.
We go to sleep serpentine, 2 spoons on wrinkled sheets.
Phalanges resting in the scoops of skin between ribs
On our sides, our pulses collide.
It is scientific fact that two bodies can simultaneously react.
At a quarter to nine, your thigh brushes mine.
350 feet per second nerve synapses fire from the lips to the mind.
And No! Ain’t no making of namesake. An evolutionary slap in the face
but I'm cursing and screaming god's name in the same phrase,
Two times in vain before daybreak.
And that's my kind of sinnin’
The spinning occurs when the brain cortex overworked causes me to hold my breath.
The French call the orgasm the little death,
and baby…I just died in your arms tonight. Multiple times!
Hell, even a nun could read between them lines.
And things get crazy when we grind.
More then once the neighbors woke to crashing bodies on the tile.
And I'm writing this while highway night driving to you.
The mountains, mounds of boundaries crashing.
You made me a mathematician counting my blessings.
One education degree earned, and still, universe is teaching the lessons.
I never thought I'd be so jazzed to undress
You got me ending every fortune cookie message read.
Dot .dot .dot. in your bed.
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5. |
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LET THE CONCRETE BE LIKE FEATHERS
It's hard to imagine being swallowed by your home.
Betrayed by the bricks and mortar that each month your torn hands paid for.
That the earth can split.
Heavy on Richter Scale, rip heart and home in simultaneous seconds.
Tonight we pray for Haiti
Question God agnostic
go to bed exhausted
Beared witness but forgotten by dawn
It's hard to reconcile.
I heard stories of an old man singing gospel songs to his wife
while she bled to death for 3 nights on asphalt 50 feet from hospital doors.
Sang teardrop notes of the sacred and prolific.
Tonight, I will sleep tempurpedic.
Whisper haikus to sheep on moons
Like a log. Like a Baby. Save me.
Shield my ears from the prayers of dying fathers.
Feathers.
Let the concrete be like feathers
Let the rebar grow like ivy
Unlock kryptonite vaults and let Superman rewind time.
Tonight, we pray for Port-au-Prince
To at the same time respect and forget the physics of flesh.
of politics.
of conscience.
of Gods and monsters.
of moments of godlessness.
of satellite images taking souls to heaven and returning them via television sets.
Tonight, boats will return to the Haitian harbors to retrieve the bloated bodies of toddlers and I'm red crossing my heart.
Hoping that pulses can be heard through the pilings.
That we will be surprised by the masses that forever mantra “I survived this”
Indeed, tonight we pray for Haiti
That the waking rise.
That the fault lines sleep.
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6. |
Saturn's Back
03:46
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SATURN’s BACK
Saturn’s Back.
With the wrath of a thousand moonbeams,
The sting of a hundred Killer bees,
A Pacific rip-tide on my insides, It’s a fine time for change.
but I guess it’s not really up to me. Destiny’s come-a-calling,
Presently dissolving these small wings so if I’m gonna follow my dreams,
I’m gonna have to do it on my own two feet
See, historically it hasn’t been easy.
Was surprised to feel my heart still beating at 18,
My skin still warm at 23.
It’s not that I didn’t expect to live, it’s just that I never thought I’d live so happily in this body –
My mind a thunderstorm.
my flesh
A choppy
sea.
The perfect storm of Anatomy.
My parents beautiful mistake. My wouldn’t have it any other way.
How many times do I need to repeat
Not the wrong body. Not the wrong body.I was not born in the wrong body
Until the textbooks start to believe.
Until my GID 180’s from my Gender Identity Disorder
to their Disordered Identity of Gender
Return to Sender.
It was my dream as a kid that I could hide inside the confines of my skin.
It’s not that I always wanted to be a boy.
I just wanted to be bigger than my secrets.
That the whole of my difference could be part of somebody’s greater experience.
I used to think myself birthed minotaur.
Mythology born two bodies in one form.
And in that sense, the textbooks were correct.
A mind-body disconnect.
A resurrection of intellect.
We often know ourselves better than we’re given credit.
And I’ve apologized a million times.
To the binary. To the expectations left behind.
And every sorry out of my mouth has been a lie.
Because If I had to do it again,
I’d rise the same split cells from one egg.
Be pulled from C-incision and begin again this same life I’ve been living.
With consent this time – no fighting fate.
You want to play a numbers game?
It’s statistically impossible that none of us change.
So I’m constantly fighting solidity.
Solidarity with inconsistency.
Idiosyncrasies, social symphonies,
Heart beating the rhythm of tympanis.
Accompanying a four-chamber quartet of blood pumping life’s essence in mathematical sum.
Part of us is always gone.
…just billions…
upon billions of blinking electrons.
It is chemical law that we are at all times partial.
Just ions bearing witness and removing themselves from this harsh world.
And now Saturn’s back.
Reminding me that the things I have come from the things I lack.
Distracting the detachments with tight schedules and excuses for all of my actions.
And that ringed queen’s returned, and she’s disappointed by the distance
and I’m resistant to being passive, all snobby like I’m passed that.
When inside….I’m aging backwards
Teenage idealism and cursing.
Want to crawl back into the womb and begin again at first breath.
Inhale
Expand my diaphragm and do it again
Inhale
Expand. Explode through sternum.
Not just a metaphor, I’m morphing into new form.
And I don’t even know where I’m going with these words.
Just a water sign pitting fire against earth.
Talking about rebirth to validate the worth of today’s work
As to say I’d do it again. Paper meet pen.
This verbal vomit, the reincarnation of all the monsters I used to live with.
I can’t sashay through my third decade with all this weight of yesterdays,
So Saturn, I’m waiting.When you’re ready come find me.
I’ve come to terms with the complexity
A master of my own designing.
Saturn come find me. When you’re ready I’m waiting.
This is not a threat nor a promise, just a long-ass declaration.
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7. |
Jumping on Oprah's Couch
02:16
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JUMPING ON OPRAH’S COUCH
You are my worst nightmare and my best dream wrapped up in the same being.
Like animals when you can’t whether they’re fucking or fighting.
Like US peacekeeping.
Like making cheese (you know the process)
You are my worst nightmare and my best dream.
And you swept me off my feet.
Ass over elbows if only in my sleep-state wake to find the feeling was only one sided
‘Cause you say, it’s a matter of bad timing, but I say it’s only a matter of time.
‘Cause you got me waltz-beat, 1-2-3- weak in the knees.
Got hearts popping out my eyeballs, swallowing lumps in my throat.
Didn’t you know? I hollowed out my stomach to make room for these butterflies
And I’m not the kind of guy to skip a meal
So you know what I mean? You’re my worst nightmare and my best dream.
You make me feel like a million bucks and like I ain’t got no sense in the same heartbeat.
You make me fucking insane
I make you bored.
And I know it’s immature but I want to show up at your doorstep
with a picnic on my bike.
Cut your apprehension into palatable bites.
I want to spend the night.
I want to spend the night with you.
Because you make me desperate.
Me? Hey, you could take it or leave it.
And I don’t even care.
I’ve got such a school girl crush you could steal my lunch money
and I’d still invite you to my birthday swim party.
Still pass you in notes in classes asking you to check boxes.
X in yes marks the spot where my heart is.
So I’m crossing my fingers and dotting my I’s….
You’re a smart ass woman and I think that’s sexy,
I get ooey-gooey each time you text me.
And I’m dyslexic with our relationship.
Only been on one date and I’m already naming our kids.
Making down payments on white picket fences.
Cause it’s not rocket science,
It’s scientology..
I’m jumping on Oprah’s couch with just the hopes that you’ll call me.
Knocking down my walls, hoping they don’t fall in on me.
Letting down my guard hoping you’ll take a shot at me.
Because you make me thirsty.
You’re a tall glass of water that goes down easy
and I’m a short man with disordered eating.
Resorting to scheming.
Hoping when you’re sleeping you’re dreaming what I’m thinking.
And wake believing in poetry.
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8. |
Pie and Passion
01:52
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PIE AND PASSION
Forgive me Father for I have sinned
This isn’t my first poem, but it’s a first for confessing.
Forgive me I’ve been selfish
Took myself out and envisioned myself as fetish
Sin of the flesh – explored every inch of Adams rib
With no regrets I must confess
I quit questioning the steps
Stopped believing the statistics
And ignored the images
Became lustful and self indulgent
I lied for no reason.
2nd guessed the motivation for deceiving
but was delighted as the stories slipped passes my teeth
Father be lenient
I was fed morsels of regret and couldn’t stop eating it
Oh the disgrace, Talked loud and loathsome in public places
Gave into temptation and spoke hatred
Let rumors slip past my better senses
Wove tales of half-truths and the minute the moment was toothsome – I bit in.
Father forgive my indiscretions
I loved my neighbor in a biblical fashion
I couldn’t take the man out the commandments
But I sure as hell took him out for pie and passion.
All those “thou shall not’s” felt constricting
And led to a whirlwind of sinnin’
A tornado of teabaggin’ if you will…and I did.
Some might be inclined to call that false worship
But that’s the kind of seminary semantics I can get down with.
Father show patience
I’d hail Mary a million times to find love in life
Draw crosses around my heart to part these seas of narcissism and monotony
Yep – here’s another poem about me.
So I’m bent knees with eyes toward heaven
Hoping that god will be plentiful with forgiveness or at least quick to forgetting
The envy, the greed, the pride the sloth but Just
Forgive me father, I ain’t sorry for the lust.
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9. |
Loch Ness
01:57
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LOCH NESS
Today I found myself confusing shards of glass
for crystals of sugar on the subway floor.
Like I used to imagine Loch Ness from the oil slicks
in the canal behind the Red Lobster I lived near as a kid
Those days I was scared of the dark. Afraid of what my brain could make of shadows.
Socks became little shops of horror
Rick Moranis a victim of bad circumstance dancing with the skeletons in my closet.
Monsters change. I've called them many names
Not the least of which, my own
Two days after surgery I ran my fingers across lollipop scars
and thought myself unlovable
Only feeling whole when parts of me fell in shadows
Feeling it necessary to forever fuck in the dark.
I don't feel that way anymore. The Monsters change form.
It's not the ghosts of the dead it's the fists of living and what they're aiming for
Well, maybe not their aim but what they insinuate.
Sticks and stones break bones and fists make statistics
and I'm only cautiously optimistic.
There are hearses filled with self abusers
I relive my own adolescence and concentrate on my improvements.
There's a yellow song of mercy in the exquisite agony of aging
I'm half rage each journal page tuning.
In the headlines of newspapers I'm learning
that memories are merely misinformed warnings
13-year-old Darius Simmons was shot in the chest by his old ass white neighbor.
In front of his mailbox.
In front of his mother.
On the front page, there are stories of 7-year-olds in nooses.
There was Trayvon then 28 others.
It was three months and over two dozen unarmed black men and that's a fucking awakening.
This poem is a breathy tourniquet of apology for men who could confuse themselves in the mirror for my own reflection
The monsters change
it takes a delusional brain.
It takes ceasing being scared of the dark.
There are teens in suburbs sleeping in their sneakers
Dreaming of outrunning their demons
Their footsteps metronomes.
Ticking clocks of belief.
So this I have to believe
That hallucinations of half-full cups will eventually become a reality
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10. |
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ADDICTION. A DICTION. A DICK SHUN.
When we first Kissed, I peeled my windpipe off the ground and said “nothing good will come of this” out loud When we first fucked, You traced the ropes of my forearm veins and said I was your drug. Now whatever this is between us was born addicted. This thing we created has a rapid heartbeat and weak lungs And I’m on the phone with you making comparisons to crack dens and back alley abortions There’s a Neuroscience to attraction. A car crash of chemical synapse. A painkilling concoction of endorphins and dot dot dot tocins We’re nothing if not chemistry Fuck E Harmony I’m disarmed by your arm discarding my skepticism with a flip of a wrist One sip of you and I’m begging to remain a functional alcoholic. A morning after a night of whiskey looks less attractive everyday after 30
so I keep drinking you down
hoping my reflection in the mirror remains blurry. I had to give up parts of me to be with you and if that’s not the definition of addiction then I no longer know what’s true. I’m told when you first try Meth you feel invincible. That PCP gives you wings. That heroin melts you like summers filled with ice cream. I don’t even smoke weed
but you tapped my veins like maple trees
and thanked me for being so sweet
and my heart dropped like a King Pop on the surface of the sun. These things never end well What begins with DARE programs ends in poems
and withdrawal symptoms Did you know that doctors have named a broken heart a medical condition?
Physicians call it love sickness. These butterflies in my stomach, merely vessels constrictions courtesy of the sympathetic nervous system. When my crush crashes into my anatomy, my body responds with the same steps reserved for fight or flee And that’s reality. That’s not metaphor There are casualties in this drug war. Last night, I found myself just begging for a taste. Just a fix so I don’t get sick. So our story doesn’t end like this.
I’m told “once you’re an addict you’re always and addict” So I want to make like Whoopi Goldberg and get back in the habit. Counting the days until I can see you again and have it. The phone calls like Methadone only stalls the withdrawals, but it’s not the crash I’m concerned with as much as the act of falling.
Matters of the heart my friends say are tricky. The feinding stayed even when you quit me cold turkey Now my poor heart aches every 12 steps you take. We were a great hallucination. Our own brains on drugs. Not just one fried egg, we were the whole damn omelette station and I wish I never even gave in to the first temptation.
I don’t really mean that I’m just reeling Slinging greenbacks on Big Mac attacks while I’m eating my feelings. I called this shit at the first kiss Now this whole audience has to suffer while I work through it. and I’m left stating my name on OK cupid pages. Hoping someone finds this kind of desperation charismatic, I say, ”Hello, my name is Harvey and I’m an addict”
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11. |
The Tenth Letter
03:12
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THE 10th LETTER
Dear Mom,
Every year I try to write you this letter
There’s been at least 10 pages of paper but very little getting better
Every year there’s a search for Yahrzeit candles in neighborhoods with no Jewish stores like the entirety of Athens, GA.
So I buy the Catholic ones,
with saints you never learned about but who promise protection
and hint at the possibility of resurrection.
Because that’s what I really want.
To round a corner and find you nonchalant.
And catch up on the last 10 years like a high school reunion.
A decades worth of missed opportunities for communication.
The unification of our family
We’re all boys and no sanity.
10 years. You’ve missed so much.
Left me speculating you reaction
Inventing dialogue,
talking to ghosts
And outing your death to lovers
Always followed by the line, “it’s ok it’s been a long time”.
You missed meeting her and I broke her heart.
The next one left me in pieces and searching for your arms.
You missed Google becoming a verb
And Bluetooth, and the awkward years when you couldn’t tell
if somebody was talking on the phone
or making pleasantries with the voices inside their dome.
You missed 2 towers in September, 9 years of wars, and 8 years of Bush (Lucky)
before a president used hope as a message.
You went to a High School that was all white and I didn’t know that until after you died.
You missed my 20’s
You missed me becoming a man and the delicate dance that came with that shit can.
You missed the first time I thought I was beautiful.
I wanted to scream it from the roofs, I wanted to call and tell you.
You missed social networking
I wonder what you Facebook page would say
The last ten years, a broken binary code
You’re My Space page, Reba Mcentire on the upload
You missed the opportunity for me to explain “sexting” one day.
You missed the “freecreditreport.com” song
You missed lean pockets
You missed me graduating from college.,
You missed me using my degree to teach high school girls’ step aerobics.
You missed me brave in the face of blank space comma blank space comma blank space.
You missed the 5 stages of grief
my 4 year love affair with rugby,
the marshmallow awakening after 3 surgeries.
You missed the maternal need to dot, dot, dot
The calls from home, the road, etc etc.
You missed every season of top chef.
You missed gay couples walking in and out of city hall.
Michael Jackson died, and you missed his funeral.
But I’d like to imagine you there carrying one glove.
Wind blowing volume into your hair thinned by the cancer.
And I’m here on earth romancing the heavens
Hoping that 6 feet of dirt is the first step to forgetting
Because you wanted me to be a writer and I am.
I want to see you everyday but I cant.
So I’ve got a letter for each year.
I’ve got journals saved like pennies.
I’ve got the past rewritten and relived.
But no new memories.
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12. |
Remaining Familiar
04:15
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REMAINING FAMILIAR
Last summer I went back to Miami to visit my dad and prove I could be my own therapist. I had been seeing a psychiatrist for no less than a dozen still unresolved issues. Like with most other things, I ignored her advice and, in return, I gave her tips on how to treat me. I decided that I should retrieve old footage of myself as a kid. I wanted to bear witness to myself as a child to prove to there was something there that remained familiar.
So, on my trip back home, I had my dad transfer old VHS tapes to DVD for me. He asked me to log each disk as I viewed them and note the events they documented and the people at each affair. I’m watching the videos now, and as I’m writing this, the Hasidic equivalent to Napoleon Dynamite just came on the screen, half closed his eyes, and chanted in Hebrew. This part I labeled Tony and Yehudit’s wedding.
There are 4 DVD’s. I have a sheet of paper for each one and they all report in first person because I’m just not sure what to call my childhood self. Here I am at Miami’s hottest tourist spot the Parrot Jungle. Me with grandma. Me losing my first tooth. Me running for the hills as Old Faithful explodes. I have watched them all, carefully recording the time stamps and giving credits to the stars and co-stars of Allen and Louise’s wedding. Soon, I will pass these logs to my dad and I have to figure out what to call myself on them. I wasn’t Harvey then but calling myself Elizabeth sounds like I’m talking about somebody else; like I’m talking about a dog I don’t have yet but have already named…a forethought more than a live being deserving of a third person reference. I could call myself “Boogie”, my nickname as a kid but it seems like an awful way to re-introduce myself – an inside joke that makes the other people in the video seem damn right rigid. I get how parents and other family members can have a hard time reconciling the past and present. I feel so separated from myself as a child and yet protective of this virtual stranger. When I first watched the videos, I cringed seeing my body turn when my dad would call out “Elizabeth, say hi to the camera.” I felt offended like he was calling me that to my face in current day and had the urge to correct him. It’s so irrational but these things are tricky.
The last footage of me sent me into convulsions of laughter. It’s labeled “me in Lady Wares”. I’m seven years old in a gold lame’ dress with a deep V neckline and an unknown origin. I trip immediately in a pair of my mom’s high heels before she asks for a take two. The camera shuts off and blinks awake again for a more successful stroll down the walkway from our front door. At this moment I feel more like “Harvey” than any other time in the hours of footage. I’m wearing fake boobs and my dad is trying really hard to get me to say “boobs” – because it’s funny. I keep trying to tell him they are just tennis balls and I keep grabbing at them because I like the feel of the tennis ball fuzz rubbing against my stomach, which is where they eventually landed. My parents shoot this footage like I’m doing a Hollywood interview. My mom tells me to strut and my dad asks me if I’m going to be on Dynasty AND Dallas next season. I tell them I’m going to be starring in “Revenge of the Nerds 2” and promptly trip on the hem of my dress on the way out of the door. It’s all too perfect.
I’m not the psychiatrist I thought I was. There are no answers in this footage. I’m a happy kid. A sad and cranky California tourist. A hula-hoop champion. A birthday girl. An excellent swimmer. I am a busted front tooth and a forehead of black bangs. I don’t have a name anymore but in those videos I run up to the camera and say hi to myself 25 years later and the image is not altogether unfamiliar.
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13. |
Mono-Nucle-No-Kiss
02:46
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MONO-NUCLE-NO-KISS
I just got broken up with and I wanted to be slutty
Went to a festival, picked up a fuck buddy
Mutually beneficial, you know we F’d grade A
From dawn to day we made like bunnies
Parted ways, but it wouldn’t be forever
Doctor said “He gave you mono should have kept them legs together”
I got Mono-Nucle-NO KISS
No K-I-S-S-I-N-G
No Booty’s Calling
Got that Kissing Disease
Now I got doctor bills, Got gross throat and chills
Spent a month in bed, went out got ill again
No bike riding, no High Life-ing, no midnighting for me
I tried to heal a broken heart but got that kissing disease
I got Mono-Nucle-NO KISS
No K-I-S-S-I-N-G
No Booty’s Calling
Got that Kissing Disease
Now the CDC says no tonsil hockey for months
Even though I’ve been tempted by two lips more than once
I’ve been good, very good, but you know I fucking hate this
Nobody seems to know how long I’ll be contagious
No Getting cuddly, feeling studly, no bumping uglies for me.
24-7 in my Snuggie with my kissing disease
I got Mono-Nucle-NO KISS
No K-I-S-S-I-N-G
No Booty’s Calling
Got that Kissing Disease
Mononucleosis sucks really fucking bad
I went out on the town now I wish I never had
I’m so fucking tired I don’t want to leave my bed
This is what it feels like to be alive but half dead
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14. |
Whip Your Faux
02:36
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WHIP YOUR FAUX
I whip my faux to and Fro’ x 7
I whip my faux
Hop up out of bed and my hair is flat
Cause last night I was laid up on my back
But it’s morning time now, it’s a quarter to nine
Got to but my Faux Hawk up make it rise-n-shine
F-A-U-X How’d you know I like queer sex
H-A-W-K rat tail in the back makes it gay
Don’t mock, just shape the hawk
just shape the hawk, just shape the hawk
Revlon, Aveda, L’Oreal, gets my Faux Hawk rising through the middle
Go to the barber tell her “short on the sides. I’m going out to the gay bar tonight”
I whip my faux to and Fro’ x 7
I whip my faux
So the Faux Hawk means that it’s short on the sides
That it’s high in the front, that it’s funky on the fly.
If you’re thick with your crop, you can use the thinning sheers
This message is approved by at least a million Queers
I’m not hating - it looks good on every shape of face
It rises to occasions and is easy to maintain
I saw Gwen Stefani rock a Faux on a plane
Saw Rihanna hold umbrellas to protect one from the rain
So all you Mo’Fo’s. Respect the Faux-Ho
Yea you love this Faux Ho-You love this Faux Ho’
You love this Homo - Uh-oh, Here we go!
I whip my faux to and Fro’ x 7
I whip my faux
Step one, part the side so you get a guide
Then you fade with your scissors ‘till you reach that line
Step 2, When the sides are done, move on to the front
Texturize the top so you don’t get a bump.
Step 3, grab you gel and squeeze
Push up to the middle so you don’t make like Screech
Dustin Diamond from back in the 90’s
That dork with his drawers pulled up in his hiney
That guy rocked the Fro. But me, I whip the faux
I whip my faux to and Fro’ x 7
I whip my faux
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15. |
BootyShake
02:57
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BOOTYSHAKE
BootyShake! Can your booty take?
First date, first base, you can stay at my place
Ace of Base on the stereo
We can take it slow, let go the ego
Step toe to toe, slide side to side,
Just sit back and enjoy the night
So you Genderqueers, shake your rears
Don’t fear the sneers, everybody looks weird
When they are dancing on the dance floor
Only one in four’s got moves that aren’t dorky
So save your drama for Maury
Povich, I know this much to be true
It ain’t hot in here baby it’s just you!
I think it’s you too, I think it’s you too
Everybody looks cute shaking their boot
Everybody looks fine shaking their behind
So we’re gonna shake our where? Derriere!
We gonna shake our what? BUTT
What we gonna do?
BOOTYSHAKE
When we gonna do it?
ALL NIGHT UP LATE
Ladies, Gentleman and gender neutral
Got this Fagette feeling Karma Sutral
Don’t need tutorial on the Chicken Noodle
Got 45 pages, check me out on Google
If you do though, just be warned
I ain’t cooler than cool,
I rock it lukewarm when I hit the dance floor
I don’t wait for the thump to shake my rump
I gotta a Barbie Doll hump
Man born without penis
A whole ‘lot of Mars
With an itty-bitty Venus
Don’t take a genius to figure out the front
You want to scope the goods check out my what? BUTT
What we gonna do?
BOOTYSHAKE
When we gonna do it?
ALL NIGHT UP LATE
Feet feet, butt butt, Feet feet, butt butt
Feet feet, oh what? You ain’t heard?
ABC, that’s me, just a little ol’ nerd
My Space is your space just in case,
You were searching the web looking for this face
Your fingers do the walking, my profile does the talking
I’m stalking Terry Gross every time I get a moment
An Ipod? I own it
Queer Party? I throwned it!
I recorded your whole set was about to upload it at
www.youknowwhat?
I’m not bro’s before ho’s, I’m friends before frot
I don’t get caught, I get off. xtube.com
Figure I know half the guys in front the camera
I’ve seen them at the parties, shaking their bodies,
Seen them at the club shaking their what? BUTT
Like salt pepper, gotta shake a shaker
Like a martini, gotta stir and shaker
Check the Richter scale, we got an Earthquaker
I don’t even know her but I’d like to take ‘er
Out on a date to BootyShake-r
Why?
What we gonna do?
Booty-Shaker
At the gay bar
Gloria Gaynor
I got killer dance moves
I’m a lady-slayer
Go back to the bar and
Patrick Swayz-her
What we gonna do?
BOOTYSHAKE
When we gonna do it?
ALL NIGHT UP LATE
Tomorrow we got to worry about getting paid but tonight
all we got to do is BOOTY-SHAKE!!
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16. |
Fagette Remix
03:38
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FAGETTE
Hello! I’m a true switch from Athens, G-A
Going to protests, high-fiving the gays
I’m a single, white, eh That on any given day,
may have a tendency towards homosexualitaaaay, heeey, heeey, heeey
I’m a F-A-G-E-TT-E
A twinkle toes when disrobed got double X’s in rows
Got gender troubles in loads
I need a man that can handle what’s underneath these clothes
Cause I got a V to the A-G- I-N-A
But no P-E-N-I-S Env-ay
Cause fo real doh
I got a Dildo,
I got two Dildos
I got three Dildos
Now it takes two to felecio but only one to tango
You know I mean business when I pop in Luther Vandros
I’m an equal opportunity lover,
I like the boys, girls, and others
L-G-BTQ-I-LMNOP
Apples and oranges, they’re all fruits to me
I like ‘em big
I like ‘em small
I like 'em tall
I like Rupaul
I like Rupaul
I like Rupaul
I like Rupaul
I like Rupaul
So here’s to the girls with the Chubby Chub
Here’s to the boys ain’t got no butt
To the Sexy nerds, the freaks, the butches, and the Geeks
The bears, the s and m’s, and the femme lesbians
I’m a pansexual,
I got my hands on the manual,
I’m a smooth Jew – a bar mitzvah party animal
I’m a F-A-G-E-TT-E
A twinkle toes when disrobed got double X’s in rows
Got gender troubles in loads
I need a man that can handle what’s underneath these clothes
Cause I got a V to the A-G- I-N-A
But no P-E-N-I-S Env-ay
Cause fo’ real doh
I got a Dildo,
I got two Dildos
I got three Dildos
Now have you heard, I’m speaking the good word
There’s been rumors that I tutored Ms. Cleo about the future.
Yeah, you remember her - the fortuneteller from TV
$2.99 a minute for a little ESP.
She said Team Gina Gonna Dance you sweaty.
She said the Athens Boys Choir is just one little fairy.
But I don’t stop believing
Hold on to that feeling.
See I keep dreaming of my posters on ceilings
And independent artists being reviewed in Dynamite Magazine
We’d rap back like slap bracelets, a throw back to the 80’s
Like before Kirk Cameron went fundamentalist
and we all wanted to have his little babies.
And Doogie Houser was the smartest guy we knowed
We were coo-coo for cocoa and had no clue about a TV station like LOGO
We were all Reaganomics and synthesized beats,
Doing the Running Man, Reebok pumps on our feets.
And al those dances, I could never get it
So I step back because the only slide I know..is electric
Boogie-woogie-woogie-woogie
I’m a F-A-G-E-TT-E
A twinkle toes when disrobed got double X’s in rows
Got gender troubles in loads
I need a man that can handle what’s underneath these clothes
Cause I got a V to the A-G- I-N-A
But no P-E-N-I-S Env-ay
Cause fo’ real doh
I got a Dildo,
I got two Dildos
I got three Dildos
So you can pick one that’s just your size
If not, we’ll go buy that fits just right
We’re all one love, two love, ménage à trios
Queer love, het love, Whatevah’
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