... are resting tight upon my chest these last few days.
Their absence from the cityscape of Sydney and, I have been told, Melbourne too, speaks volumes of the silence they endure in Australia. As I look toward my second visit- I am holding all the parts of me accountable for writing them into my experience.
My fingers tremble at the impossibility- the irrelevance of such foreign fingers attempting to denote the sound of something not inate.
My own people, the scattered ruins of the searing brush with poverty and marginalisation, remain faceless under the polished glimmer of tourism in Jamaica.
The parallel is apparent in the Native American face peering round corners of casinos and alcohol. In the great abandon of that reality, no mention is made of Joy Harjo's work or Sherman Alexi's contention- in the large jingle of coins and slot machines, everyone is all a-feathers and healing- the brochures do not speak of the drunkeness, the defeat in the eyes of the poor who live in the Townships in Soweto- or just outside of Rosebank in Johannesburg, South Africa.
I suspect I already know the expression on the faces of children in New Dheli, or Calcutta, or fucking Rwandha.
I am made powerless by my own inaction.
What are we doing here in this new century?
all these chips and bombs and softer toilette paper and creamier brie.
what of the faces?
the hearts. Unfolding into broken
bloody letters that never get sent to the lovers?
what are we doing as the century settles in it's turning
what am I doing in this apartment with the windows
and the artificial heat
warmer than it is safe for Muslim men to fly from Qatar
to Khartoum
from Los Angeles to Minneapolis
An Arab woman
who writes more beautifully than I could wish to
gently explains why she does not argue with the immigration officer in London
or Paris
or New York City
especially in New York City
and my dragons rage for her
for me
and the number of times
people assume I know where to get good weed
or that being lesbian means I was raped
or that I was not
or that my father never loved me
or that my love does not expand to encompass
the large jeweled grins of dark faced men
in Ghana
or the silly eighteen year old boy who insists that dinner over candles
would be perfect for the beginning
of how he wants to love me
All of them
Black men in Norway
Burnt sugar smiles of men in Brixton
they are my brothers and my love for them is wider than the Sargasso
and I speak for them
do not assume that Black men
cracks a divide in my politics
My brother is a black man in Austria
he travels from Montego Bay to Rome to Berlin
and I make bargains for his safety
burn sand and mark his image with walls around it
I paint in cracks so that love may find it's way to him
Do not assume me
Black or female
or lesbian
or Asian
or immigrant
if any of it means I am not the exhausted heel of an Aboriginee
the broken shoulder of a Muslim mother in Dakkar
the slip disc of an Arawak in 1492
assume me an arm of a people
displaced
somewhere Venus is searching for me
and I intend to be found
these rants have me believing
and not believing
these rants are just words
and the voice in sometimes without legs
but we run anyway
run nigger run
the new nigger ain't nuttin but a dollar removed from the wallet of some fool
working long hours
for better credit
give me back my name
and take back these bloody numbers
there is flesh here
and tendons pulling at the forced motion of palms
flat against chests
mimic me the touch of a lover and I might fall for your fury
but if you kiss me without my permission
it is still rape?
These words are for the babies
and the grandmothers
and the men who have buried sons
this is that lamentation-
write your own rant- read it to someone-
in poetry,
Staceyann
Morning finds me among the rubble of my travels to Down Under.
Books, wines, T-shirts and the odd assortment of chocolates.
It is still hours ahead
of where I sit listening to the time on my laptop. The thing does not tick
but time is a moving. I feel the wind of its hand on my shoulder and I am at least glad to be home in my own bed
warmed by a newness
an old familiar
sprawl and crawl of demons shrinking
and angels looking me
square in the face
and the whole fiasco is a race between me and my ego growing more aware of itself
dying is a trick
if you have the right spell
and I ain't no witch
just a bitch with a funny accent
everywhere
the words sound foreign in my local mouth
Aborigines
absent from a place that National Geographic
calls theirs
Asian faces look like Black
America
all work force
and no real voice to a throat singing more than old amusing sprituals
a trick I say
that dying
a trick
So I went To Australia
and loved every minute of it
Thank you Sydney
for the open arms
the wide grins of welcome and wonder
will be back sooner than my body knows
missed Brooklyn
something awful/something good about Brooklyn
these days
I love me some Brooklyn and my poems happening to the apartment like rain
and I drink of it
grateful for the water rushing
just above sea level
drowning is easy
it's the dying that's hard
Rubber gloves and no hands to put them
The show in Parramatta was kind to us in the cradle of a great theater
will post pictures on the new site that will be up in a few days!!!!
Did I mention a few days!!!
the ragged details of the everyday
the mundane
disturbs the canter of these utterings
I head back to Australia in a few weeks
will be there for the achieved romance of Valentines
write me
Kisses to you world,
Staceyann
It took two days to get here.
The night screams silence and I respond like a lover. Pleased and willing to take credit for a sound that existed long outside the empty pleasure of my ear.
I like Sydney.
There are Asian faces everywhere. I like that.
I slept for the second eight hours of the visit. The first was consumed with figuring out how to email and call and fiddle with the new cameras I bought.
Skin shedding
and I am raw with the new senses
the layer beneath smells
like hope
and dreams are finding their way
back to the pillows on which I sleep
again
the world is smiling and the teeth do not scare me today
My room is already
a mess
and the Japanese rice cakes are more crumbs
than cakes
and the Korean grocer
has already given me chocolates
because I laughed out loud
the streets look
strangely
familiar
like I should have been here before
I want to go back to South Africa
before I die
I want to dance in Durban once more
a girl
I am beginning to know better
tells me how good it feels to dance on the toes
of satin shoes
built
for white girls
her black hips
and African thighs
moving to the giggle of Luther
she smelled like yesterday
and made me laugh like tomorrow
was gonna be just fine
Be present
in these moments that pass too rapid
too brusque
enjoy the slow turn of old phrases
made into dark pans of poetry
poured down the throats of monkeys
beautiful monkeys
moving upside
ladders and insects and all that beauty
in one lifetime!
We have 8 shows this week.
Tamika is sleeping in the room next door. Suheir is beautiful
and the night is on it's back
snaking it's belly on the glass
that separates me from myself
In love and quiet gratitude for your pixels of presence
spread out all over this sandwich of a net
inter-connecting strangers and old friends
peace,
Staceyann