NCOD 2005 - The Facebook

So, you know those awkward moments where you’re standing with a whole bunch of people you really don’t know that well. You’re dressed relatively nice but edgy enough that if your conversation were a little less engaging you’d look ridiculous. But you’re losing your self-awareness in the attention and the growing comfort. Then it slips from your mouth, a name, just a name that means nothing to you but a jerk comment earlier, a bad haircut last week, a poorly handled social situation. You drop the name and the dismissive negative connotations it carries for you. and the room stops. Suddenly you know it, you don’t know who he is or what he did, but you know it. You’re standing on holy ground and not only did you not remove your sandals but there’s shit on the bottom of your shoe.

Well folks, I’ve got the feeling now is about to be one of those moments. You see, i know a lot of people are in love with him. And god knows the gays would be lost without his presence. In fact, I know for a fact that most of you are quite intimate with him but I’m afraid my tolerance’s been worn through and I am done. Its not to say that I don’t know him well, that he hasn’t served me dutifully and I too have not been at one time or another entirely obsessed with his abilities, his connections, his infinite power to amuse, but folks I’ve just got to say its over, I utterly hate The Facebook

Yes, I took his name in vain, the Facebook, that bastion of repressed sexual energy unleashed across your screen in grand displays of blue and white. That e-mail crazy, definition happy contraption that got you that number, that connection, got you invited to that party, hooked you up with that study group, gave him the right to know your favorite movie, gave her the information to follow you home, gave you the information to follow him home call him up and mail things to his POBOX, the Facebook.

Now, why you may wonder am I taking ish with the facebook, what did he do to me that hurt me so badly that I would denounce him in front of all of you. well, I can’t sya it wa ssimple, that I can point directly, I can’t say it was even personal to him, maybe I’m taking ish with the broader spectrum of his class. Yes, taking ish with downlink, gay.com, even MySpace. You see, there is something in me that resists the cartographer, there is something unmappabl;e, irreducible, something outside of my interests, my quote, my personal statements that I would rather control. There is something about me that resists product summaries, that resists being shopped through like so many brands of yogurt. Something in me that doesn’t want to be easymac and maybe just isn’t so good and cheesy as to fit into blue boxes.

There is something in me that resists being defined. Now, this is a coming out piece its true and I’m not trying to come out as a hater, not trying to come out as an RA or as a defender of the complexity of the individual. All I’m trying to say is when you ask me what I’m looking for I hesitate, when you ask me what I’m interested in I draw a blank, when you ask me who I’m interested in, I just don’t know. You see I’m gayer than most, I’m sure. More likely to date a boy than ask him to play ball. I’m masculinely handicapped and fashionably experimental, I’m diva crazed and I act, sing, dance and paint. I rate 27 on a purity test and am a verifiable homo. But I come to that box and I hesitate nonetheless, I hesitate to confess my interest as one in labels, in dualities and catories

NCOD 2005 Collabo w/ Arriella

i didn’t know what to do when she (he) touched me

kissed me
we had just come to one of those arangements so common in
sleepovers and cheap pornos
to see what all the fuss was about
except from the look in her eye and they way her hand lay on my leg

when his hand brushed my thigh in a way unobtrusive but exploring
i didn’t know what to do when he followed me upstairs

i suspected this was an excuse

ready to study but bookless
taunt and tease the only implements in his pencil case

and i knew i was no less guilty

when the highlighter flew from my hand and i was 7 years old
being taunted by the pretty little girl with pigtails and plastic jewel barrettes

i noticed how beautiful she was,
the smoothness of her hair, sleek, shining down shoulders
and a sibilant s that i might have been too young to find sexy
but did anyway

i didnt know what to do when i was 18 going on 13 all over again

and i didnt know what to do

the dropped voice, insecurity, nothing compared to the inability to articulate the thrills he sent through me

but she kissed me i kissed her

we kissed

lying side by side, he and i, neither spoken, lying in bed together, under sheets together, heads rest together, slowly inch together, fingers nest together and

and i knew it was she who slipped her tongue, strong and sweet, under mine, through lips, parted pink from pressure, rose with a too-many-sweaters-on-a-snow-day-flush.
breath to dew on my neck, like the sweat i felt on her palms, and skin, seasoned, sea-salty siren’s flesh.

worlds crack together

and i pulled away with seismic shudders,
because my hands were all wrong and my breath was too fast and i knew i shouldnt care as much as i did
if she wanted to feel me as much as i wanted her right at that moment
with a love that was quickly becoming corrupted, confusedly, confoundingly
akward
i was so akward, but she was sure
and i loved her

spilling out onto the walls, dawn had no name that morning and midnight no meaning
what broke and spilled open was not birdsong but heart strong and beating, brilliant light
the warmth of that morning where legs were allowed to rest together, where arms could hold together could not be said to be the day.

late night TV in the background and the sounds of her parents snoring one room over and our breaths so heavy

the warmth of suns that bright are only in eyes that shimmer and beg for that first touch, that rolling over, that facing, inch foward, kiss
i could not tell you what it meant then

in the rumples of the sheets in the morning

i could not tell you what it means now

eyes like cue balls impacting into divergence

Eyes furtive

the heat of capillaries obscuring freckles

Fear coursing

her flinch my my foot brushed hers beneath the breakfast table

My heart was not fully there
My lips would not conceded the point

and she said she didnt mean it

light only made the distance greater

but the fevered, ferverent, dangerously desperate embraces we stole behind pantry and closet doors
held an irony not lost on me at the time

Between he and I was me and her
Between his and mine were rites of betrayal and soulless
Between you and me, I could not do it

and when i finally pushed courage into taut, tense tendons, grabbing her hand, cold,
as we walked up the street
three weeks after our first kiss

The kiss, the breath, the pulling back

her stiffness shoved the shame, prickling and burning, through my nostrils

My breath hurried, not quite right
Tongues tied
Whispers not enough to break me

she tore the heart that had lain in my palm with her withdrawl

Take me, make me dance with you, fall from you, leap through you
Make my lips drip from your sweat
Hands tremble on your thighs
There is something more to love
Less to loyalty
His hands play like children on my back
His touch inciting the nerves of my core to revolt
Now let me go, know myself
That self true to her
To you
True in you
Only with you

Get Out the Vote (2)

I took the pen from my mouth and put it to the paper
I pressed hard so as to funnel myself through
To enter the length of the barrel
Winding the spring tight
And dousing myself in the blackness, the clarity of the spoken word
My thoughts defined by the whiteness between
But reaching the end I realized that there is nothing of permanence in performance
There is nothing of meaning in speaking
And all of performance in permanence
What worth has a man if he tell his whole life
And can’t put his name on the page

Wrists release in tension and pen lingering down to the page
Cartridges roll loose even as the fingers begin to dance on the page
And time lets loose of the unkown restrictions of the heart
If feet were not tired and hands were not tired would I be running so hard writing so fast
But there is nothing of what I spoke in my writing
Nothing of the said in what I read
There on my own page

Get Out the Vote

There once was a ballot box blue
A ballot box hopeful and new
With words scribed upside
And hopes to provide
A home to decisions all you

There once was a person named you
A person got shit he had due
So he holed himself up
Said God thats enough
And voting day slept he right through

Then, ‘long came decisions to bear
‘long came girls needing proper health care
Their parents knew well
Perhaps condemned them to hell
But regardless, decisions weren’t theirs

And teachers, they came them to teach
They came, the young ones to reach
But five years, oh my
What a long time to try
To be thrown right back out on the streets

But what then, good you, could he say
Having left his vote there in the hay
If hit it he must
In alarms he must trust
to be there on time on that day

Now i know that you’ve heard this before
That you’ll probably hate me, what’s more
But I wanted to say
To avoid, please, the hay
And be not your apathy’s whore.

I Am Not Who You Think I Am

I am not who you think I am
My skin is oily and my hair is like silk
I am urging my own self up from beneath the surface and emerging caked in mud
i am without face and without faith when I see you
Wiping away darkness my skin falls away like night
I am not what i meant to be what i woke up this morning
i am not recognizable to that self that self that thought today might be the day
That made a difference
there is silence in my sirens
And I don’t know how far the sound carries when I don’t have the words
The end to language, the end of language is that point where poetry begins
Where language strecthes itself to its bounds, taught on its frame and spills around the edges we crane our necks to see round, but two d, don’t tell me, you think you got x-ray
I can’t forget the first time she spoke to me her words, like ivory like tusks that gored me that scored my heart and left light in the holes
I was drenched in the persperiation of her tongue as it twisted did back flips and forgot to pay gravity its respects
i thought of her then, her timing her rhyming schemes that can’t be bound in because they don’t listen to eachother but lucidly, transluscently remember times when things such as these were said
I desvcribe what I hear and know it in detail but can’’t seem to formulate the new reality, the creativity is in the minuteness of stretching, the growtyh is in tearing and restretching
I am not to be grafted I do not understasnd your logic and I am perhaps deformed and forgotten, so thick is my limb that I forget to take steps to make sure I can and I root into ground and forget my own movement
I am not to be broken, I forget my own name sometimes, at night in the dark
I call ot to self but no one cals back because the bitch is mad that baby is so impersonal
I call out and I name you, name her, name boyfriends past but they call only back in echoes framing something somoeone I do not recognize, there is blackness in that forgetfulness of self and it shines

Freshmen

So, I hear there’s a new student group here on campus
I hear that they’ve got more members than Intervarsity
More poclivity towards self-embarassment than the band
And more sexual tension and frustration than the entire harem of Gaeties auditionees
I hear they’re more international than Talisman
More talented than, Talisman
And more likely to be at all official Stanford events than Talisman.
Yes, I’ am talking about the class of ‘09.

You see there are some new cats on campus
New cats easily identifiable by their shiny new bikes
Their quick pace and wantness to laugh inappropriately
Their jampacked polysyllabic vocabulary
Obfuscating whatever the hell they’re trying to say
In words you’re sure you read in high school English
But have long since forgotten the meaning of
Now running down the front of your shirt, and gathering in a pool at your feet
An offering to the newly deicized upperclassman, you
And your potential to make them cool.

You see, I’m a Freshman RA
And for a week now I’ve been running the race of NSO
Beside 26 incoming freshman
Their minds, hearts and mouths overflowing with questions
With hopes, desires, with possibilities
They don’t yet know how to frame into a thesis.
There’s fears of being here, fears of leaving home
Fears of booze, of IHUM, of not fitting in
Of fitting in too well, of not sticking out
Of getting passed over
Of passing over opportunity
There’s hopes for first loves, for people who look like me
Who think like me
Who hope and dream like me
Big dreams of concerts on other celestial bodies
Of meeting another celestial body
They dream of cures and of prizes
Of bests and surprises
Of new thoughts, new ways, new times and new spaces
There is no end to their dreaming

And no end to their questions
Who’s better? Who’s faster? Who’s smarter?
And cuter?
Who’s got the answer that I am lacking?
What’s the CoHo, FloMo, RoHo?
Who’s my HPAC, PM, PHE?
What’s the SHPRC?
What’s an ice louge? beer pong? body shot?
How do I find out who thinks I’m hot?
What qualifies as random play?
And what the dif entre queer and gay?
Who knows what its like to have tried that, done that?
Who gave them the opportunity I was denied?
Why am I here? Who let me in? Who’s mistake am I?

And it’d be great to look at them, to look at them and laugh and remember the days when those same thoughts flew through my head
When I wondered what the hell I was doing here
Who the hell let me in and what the hell they were smoking.

But you know, those days are last week and yesterday, today and last year
Right before I stood up here
And right after I sit back down.

And that kid with his NSo map
Is just a lost little kid in me
And the doubt’s still there
The doubt that gathers at the corners of my mouth when I speak
That shines bright from my cheeks when I dance
That jitters the air around my hands when I perform and makes the paper quiver

And what’s more, the hope is still there,
Five years later
My freshman roommate now graduated
My first love now moved on three times over
My walls packed with pictures of memories,
Of pictures of losses and failures
Of memories of parties, of classes and classmates
And the hope’s still there
And the dreams,
the big dreams
The ones that don’t fit in my dorm room
That don’t fit in the bubble
Those dreams that are corny and sweet and not self-conscious
Those dreams that folks will laugh at
Those dreams that have possibility still in them
Those dreams that want to make a change in the world
But still don’t have the language to tell you how
that still believe in the goodness of the human heart
The fargility of the human heart
And the possibility of love
Dreams that still hope that conservatism will be short lived
And a face like mine, if not darker and more flamboyant
Will take the stage and speak of changes yet undreamed
Of freedoms unprecedented
And tell you that you have responsibility for this nation,
And that everything is going to be alright.

In the face of a freshman we can see our failures
Our disappointments
Our party fouls, sex blunders, blind groping for information
Our shit faced adventures, our fountain hopping, panty thieving
Non-chalant and all but unconcscious first year here
Our desire to just fit in, desire to be better at life
But what makes it worth being a freshman RA is
The reminder that those hopes are what got me here
Those blind, foolish, idealistic hopes
And they’re what we have most to offer to eachother
to ourselves, our parents, families and lovers.
To the class of 09, thanks for the reminder.