Chorus (14 page)

You, who? Why, you the 206-boned skeleton that takes

20 years to fully ossify. You the circulatory loop that

changes its oil every 3 to 4 months. You the supple-skinned

habitat hosting 1,000
different species of bacteria
.

You the flabby folds of warmth nobody wants to wear.

You the flex and the flow of a strength that moves the world.

You the heart the size of a fist
with
the capacity to encompass

the universe, and the
compassion
to collapse under the weight

of so much suffering. You the monthly fertility window
in
which

your inst
i
nc
ts
can call into the lineage another reproduction of you.

And you the central
nervous system
that coordinates all of your

movements and keeps e
a
ch of your constituents up to speed.

You bawdy, naughty
body
, you. Maybe so. And what, pray tell,

say you of the you
of
which the body is a constituent?

You say a year is everything to a babe but only 1/67th of everything

to most of the population that nears the end of its incessant ticking.

You say the
rings
inside the
oak
say it bore 700 cycles of seasons,

and limbs it lost lingered in scents no man alive knows existed.

You say mountains have been shown
to
become plains, and

bets are on that the Midwest is an
ocean
waiting to happen.

You say the so-called solid ground beneath your feet moves

so quickly and so slowly you think you're
standing
still
.

And you say anything you say can be held against you.

III

Well said, or well enough t
o
make it worth standing behind

as a saying, a saying spanni
n
g approximately 165 ticks,

be it ticks of the clock, or ticks of the old ticker, the two

forming the rhythm of
a
poem not quite upon its
bed of nails
.

If you could arrange those nails one by one and make them

say something to someone of the stars, what would they

look like, what would they impress upon a body

that had no inkling of the measurements of man?

You're afraid
a poet
working in language has no such powers,

but if he did, if an expression could communicate understanding

and bridge the g
a
p between himself and his kin, as it so often

fails to do, and then go on to
bridge
the gap
between
species,

you like to think it would flay the tick and lay it bare from its

essence to its enclosure, t'would twirl before the eye a sight

that looks
the
same from every angle, that alights a design

so simple and
precise
there can be no misunderstanding—

a point, if you will, in which the
shape
of humanity resides.

But failing such prowess, you give it a try, and say something

along the lines
of
:

The body and experience are common to us, as is the moment,

now. Time is a now followed by another now and an immediate

recognition of both. Every body has its own hue of experience,

emerges at a particular place in time and moves along until it doesn't.

This trajectory of the body we call duration, the length of a life,

how long it takes to stop moving. The body keeps track of its

own trajectory, and within the body operates an awareness

of countless trajectories, an
awareness
that shifts
and
sweeps

with the direction of the body's attention. The awareness

takes periodic readings from these trajectories and uses the

readings to inform the body's direction. Some trajectories

may never appear to the body, but
the
awareness in the body

recognizes that it may nevertheless be part of their movement.

You may be such a body. If so, thanks from this body within you.

my teeth are crazy because i sucked my thumb until i was 16 because one time i answered the phone at 8 in the morning when i was 6 in our
dank basement
suite to a man heavy breathing and moaning and crawled into bed with my mom and looked up at the window ledge through a crack in the curtains at the condensation thinking about a conversation my mom had when she didnt know i was listening about a neighborhood peeping tom. then i thought about my strawberry shortcake bike with the banana seat rusting under the back stairs because i
didnt actually learn how to ride a bike until i was 20 because i
w
as scared because someone tried to teac
h
me and accidentally ste
ere
d me into a parked truck because i never trusted adults because
i
was
fucked
with because i didnt have sex until i was 22 because i was a late bloomer because i was scared because i could do things that repressed myself easier because i was smoking cigarettes at 10, smoking weed at eleven and doing acid at 13 trying desperately to beat up girls with
my friends
but instead always picked up their shit for them after my friends hit them and told them to get out of here quick so they wouldnt get hit anymore because i always managed somehow to not get beat up even when i was threatened by nicole who had a reputation for beating girls
with a
chain and then taking all their clothes leaving them naked and this shit terrified me not because of the
chain
but because of the taking of the clothes cos i had body image issues from all the boys i grew up with telling me shit that doesnt mean shit to me now except as faded history for what i fight for now because i dont want to hear a man or a woman say anything fucked about someone's body ever again because fat isnt condemable and i dont care about your standards because im tired of remembering my mom and aunt
in front of the mirror
scrutinizing their bodies not realizing the young sponge sitting on the bed watching. im queer, because im not gonna assimilate because im not worried about gender lines because i believe in counter culture and new ideas of whats hot because most of us are survivors and need
to find safe spaces to heal
because were still scared and were
f
i
e
r
ce and we l
o
se our shit and find it and keep
m
oving forward because we have to.

We have
the right to explore
this world without your filters

To smell incense burning in a den that exists

Light years from your mess hall

This world belongs to no one and to everyone

We are not a
calculation

Our dreams are more real and more profound than your
masks

We have the right to be citizens of unknown territories

To be tourists inside our own hearts

For love needs no visa

For laughter requires no
proof of identification

Our agendas are blind finger paintings

Our movements coax stars to align

We are random and illimitable

Like the song of the coqui in the rainforest

That is our childhood and our retirement

We have the right to make and unmake ourselves

To fall tragically and to patch ourselves back together

With the
fears of our lovers and the sorrows or our mothers

The press conference is an
illusion

The senate hearing a regurgitation
of
brats

Our kindness will be
erect
ed as a shrine

Our confus
ion
will be the garden that complements its entrance

We are a brief and never-ending pageant

When we embrace
a bridge of light
expands across all 14 dimensions

When we cry we give birth and host exquisite banquets

We have the right to exist unfettered

To be shamelessly imperfect

To belch and call it a Samba

We cannot be bound by economics or psychological an
a
lysis

For we are the dream The
memory
The
drum

The electrical impulse

The stone The water's offspr
in
g The dust The
silence

And the opus

We have the right to question everything To be temporary and

nameless
and
anonymous

To surrender to the scent of the passion fruit To spread our kindness like a cold

We have
the right to become
boundless

To acquiesce and wave at strangers

To live in the infinitive form of
the verb

To be

We met him on a
crowded
city street in a nondescript city.

I can't re
mem
ber the day
or y
ear.

I just know that it was an autumn afternoon . . .

He said

“My name is Happiness, Happiness Santiago,

And the pleasure is all mine.”

He was half Cuban, half Dominican,

and was raised by Puerto Ricans in an Italian Neighborhood.

His smile was infectious, almost intoxicating.

“Yo Happiness, what's good homie?”

A passerby yelled.

“Everything's good my man. I'm about to read a poem to my new friends” he said with a smile.

All of us laughed a little.

We
had already been hooked.

“This poem is entitled the Auto-Biographical, Biography of Happiness Santiago. It's a love story for the most p
ar
t.” And h
e
screamed:

“Happiness!”

It was one of those days, where everything lines up in the city.

The music from cars driving by moves in step with

young
people
boppin' their heads.

The sun bounces from window to window

brightening the shade
wh
ile the smells fr
o
m

the various nearby eateries choose not to compete,

instead
opt
ing

to unify in the name of . . .

“I was born like y'all”

he continued.

“I don't think I need
to
explain
, and everything else is
history
. Like the essays of a wanderer with a full heart
and
warm mind.
Breathing has been a pleasure from day one. From this very action I've been brought to you. My purpose? To
clarify
the
feelings
that you've always understood in the far reaches of your sub-conscious, sub-zero recesses of the subways of
th
e forgotten co
r
ners of yo
u
r mind. My heart's been lifted to share
the
opportunity of your hopes and dreams. Mine have been remembered in the reflections of the
crystal balls you call your eyes
. I am a child playing on a jungle gym, running carelessly in the afternoon shade, not afraid to keep going until I collapse from the joy of satisfactory exhaustedness. And it's obvious to me that you are no different. In fact I can hear your heartbeats skipping Double Dutch as we speak.

“It's important to note that I am not hiding. That although I find it my personal mission to run through the wind while the river is running beside me, I am not running from anything. I am flying towards my future and fully a part of the present. As I look at what appears to be a tear building up in the outside corner of your left eye, I want to be clear. Make no mistake my brothers and sisters; I've seen some of the darkest moments that pupils could possibly bring into focus. I
never pretend differently
. I'm not frozen into submission by events that have already passed, implanting them, with my invitation, squarely in the center of my tomorrow. I will have none of that. And this is the only thing in life that I can control. My lung capacity is temporary but my ability to carve a new path remains infinite as long as my name remains Happiness.”

We all soaked it in
mesmerized by
the words of a stranger, slightly embarrassed at our obvious
vulnerability
.

“I love all of you”

He said with enough conviction that it felt completely sincere.

“I love
men and women
and the more the merrier”

Each of us blushed at his clear lack of inhibition.

“I'm here right now with you my friends,
aware of all of the complexities
that make up the human existence. Or at least as many aspects as I've been introduced to thus far. If I had only one sentence to say, merely a handful of words to share, I would say remember me. I apologize if my thoughts come across as
arrogant
. That is certainly not my intention. It's just that I am very certain that I am you. And if my
intuition
is true then you will never forget yourself. And
you will cherish
each other. And if I never see you again, it won't matter because I will be remembered in
the beat of
y
our
heart
, your reflection in the mirror, in the reaction of your cells as you raise your hand to touch your cheek. Don't worry anymore. Because tomorrow is alive in this unique second and you are alive. The same way you have always been. I expect that it feels different but the difference lies in the possibilities, not in your present smiles. Your light-heartedness is the consecutive addition of
a million separate moments
and they've convened with us on this afternoon at this intersection of c
on
cr
e
te and flesh. And we wouldn't have it any other way.”