-------
some of this stuff is decent, and some is just there for sentimental value
Just procrastinating on my Econ paper...
========================================================
1. old slam poems (to be read aloud):
======================================
"Middle Kingdom"
why are my people lying?
figures in newspapers indicate heavy smudging - these stupid defensive
politicians protecting their sick political
faces: corruption beneath a Confuscian smile, as
SARS soars behind curtains in hospital rooms, and the crying
of my patient country patient is muffled beneath red and yellow hospital sheets.
I see their heads nodding like mandarins on mantels above a hot flame - are they unaware? how ridiculous
they look to screw a number like AIDS from a few million to a few thousand! these elite men in the middle screwing with a country!
why are my people lying?
you need to know that the shuang ren in Shanghai never give a decent price to
lao wai - outsiders
who are so
lao shi - honest
and so
lao shi - naive.
you need to know that truthfulness is a stage of idealism inappropriate for
serious business
like politics or money. you need to know
that every gift given is a million demands
but with kin and friends, we have yi qi -we are the most loyal people.
why is my mother ashamed
when I bring my white boyfriend home,
afraid that the whole neighborhood is watching and mocking?
i'm not a bad child,
but i always lie to my parents.
(Note: "Shuang ren" means merchant in Mandarin, "Lao Wai" means outsiders, "Lao Shi" is the word for honest which is the same word for naive. "Yi Qi" is a sort of honor/loyalty.)
--------------------------------
"Untitled"
It kind of works like a flood - makes a fine mess of me, then disappears into the air; leaves a shock-trail residue of beaten homes and rotten foundations. And every guilty water molecule, indistinguishable from every other, escapes capture and outsmarts blame. The waves recycle and rewind for a second play, elsewhere in the world.
He kind of works like a flood. He crashes. Then he evaporates, like email evaporates into the world wide web, like feelings evaporate, totally, with time and words."Everywhere and nowhere." (cold. foggy. empty.)
Such is the sight of water after flood: an intangible threat that pervades all! Not the dangerous flood water but its masked clandestine allies, the everyday water, surrounds the poor, befuddled locals with their beaten homes and rotten foundations. It teases and tortures them - every rainfall, a practical joke; every morning mist, an ironic reminder: that people are 65% water, that clouds are pleasant to look at, that we love to swim. So holds the memory of ravage in every bedtime cup of tea...
But what you gave me was just the conclusion I needed. Thank you. I won't write you again.
I work kind of like a flood - insanely, and then not at all. This week I've been madly digging for a well, a sanctuary for my memories. The flood is over, and I'm okay. I'm standing in the chaos, calculating my losses, and making practical plans to rebuild.
----------------------------------------------------
"picture perfucked" (slam rhythm)
This obsession is fading like a backwards Polaroid.
What was once as clear as law withdraws from me - splotches of color and thinning lines where all the walls should be. And all you offer me’s a faraway face and mumbles near apology. Don’t apologize. You don’t understand a thing. We speak in faulty metaphors, gaming poetry. All very sleezy and tame - our last investments, for equality.
But this is not me. This is not what I want. And I’m done finishing this nonsense…
What is love, you ask me? What is love? Love is above that line you draw, above your calculated sarcasm. LOVE fills the empty spaces. Love unnames the good and bad, love releases. It picks up all the doubtful pieces, shattered mirrors, haunted houses. Love embraces. Love FILLS the empty spaces. Love melts away the lining of the ego, of the "I want" and the "I believe" and the "I do as I want and believe," and connects two histories, two wills, two beliefs. Love is touch. Touch of two realities! The only cure for this human tragedy, separateness, our inward eyes, this keyhole narrative, alone, this mortality. Love ends through creativity the contradictions of rationality. Love tends to us, it mends through us. It’s tenderness. Love fills THE empty spaces. But love needs commitment, needs courage, feeds growth. When you grow yourself in love, it builds us both. And drawing on each other, we draw close. Love fills the EMPTY spaces. It forgives its own clichés. Keeps its own time, minds its own find. Yet so ruthless when betrayed. Love fills the empty SPACES. When love leaves, it leaves a gaping hole.
I feel the wind blow through me, through that splotched, withdrawing hole. You toss our photo, and you’re cut. But I’m stuck, freezing here with these damn metaphors. Fuck poetry. Darling, I'm so miserable! I’ve got nothing now. Except this fucking poetry
---------------------
"Rant # 16" (rhythm poem)
crush.
can't get you outta my head.
can't get you out of my head.
i want you out AH my mind.
this BOYFRIEND figure is so damn fine. so damn fine.
no.
'cause it's not even you. sometimes,
it's not even true. sometimes,
just sumpin' to do, sometimes
(screw sometimes)
it's just a role,
coal for soul,
i really need to fill this
gap, sometimes.
need you to fill this gap. poetically.
'cause YOUR POETRY'S
got me ranting and panting mad
talking WILD style hippie child style 'coz your mild smile's so bad.
but don't get too glad, you're just a fad
in my fantasy room where Orlando Bloom
is KING and Andy Lau SINGS "wow, sexy, take my ring!" thing. bling-a ling-
a ling. BING! and the brainWAVES
riding ocean, emotion
up and down my love potion, commotion
crazy crazy loco-motion, this notion
of crush. crashing
rush. dash
-brushing every corner of
my creativity. oh productivity! - rash
obsession.
------------
"Dildo Boy" (rhythm poem)
This mellow wax-gathering: what's the fucking point?
I'm an internship girlfriend. Just the practice round.
Better get the sex down pat. Better hone some skills!
-Best to flip the condom fast. -Fast love like fast burgers. Dip fried. Deep down to be refried.
Refried momentos of your camouflaged lovers.
Ivy towers. Ivy maidens. Revamped in Ivy white.
I envy you your bright!
Bright tight future like a bite, smite above me.
Always above me. (You perfection.)'Cause your height's right to hold me,
like a night sight to mold me
in your awe. Aw! oh! Ahhh! mother uh - uh!! HUH!?
Don't ask. Don't ask. Don't you dare ask!! I don't wanna know the answer. It's unspoken. Cuz the summer
is a fine time. Throw a line time. Honey, won't you make it shine time? Sublime time.
Please be kind, Time. Let me have this rhyme-time. I don't even mind time.
Don't even mind. Don't even mind. In the summertime.
===============================================
2. two vignettes from my unfinished "novel":
===============================================
All she remembers is the piercing existence of nipples. The belly is a blank face. Legs carry bodies under showerheads. Water follows the trajectory of straight black hair, and then is guided by curving flesh. Streams fill the depressed spaces, and stretch like a waterfall between parted thighs. Breasts are kaleidoscopes. The rest is tunnel wall, and a screaming squeeze like very red fruit.
Lisa, thirteen, American in Shanghai, turned the metal knobs, and a loud, cold rush of sterile water came down upon her head. She was wearing her bathing suit. On the other side of the sweltering turquoise tile, her uncle and cousin were probably already done. They were probably waiting for her by the shallow end of the pool. First, she had to wash her hair, and second, soap her body. Before they let you in, they require you to get absolutely clean. Lisa was ready with body wash, shampoo, a towel, and everything she needed except for a comb.
“Um…”
She looked to her right. A middle-aged, bathing nude had her eyes closed, her hands held up as if in prayer to cup the flowing water, and between her legs was clutched a plastic hairbrush. That won’t do. To her left, a little girl of eight or nine was running in circles, away from her splashing twin. The girl held a green, rubber, wide-tooth comb.
“Um…can I borrow that?”
Two identical, naked bodies stopped playing and turned to look at Lisa.
“This? Sure.”
Lisa bowed her head and let her slippery mess of tangled hair fall in front of her face. First, she tried to pull through the knots with her fingers, but she was afraid of giving herself split ends. Next, she placed the thick, knobby comb at the twisted juncture of rebellion, and gently tugged her way through. The water hurt her eyes, and she squinted through the black sudsy strands. All the ladies in the room were probably running around, vigorously scrubbing at their bodies, and spewing lively piles of soap bubbles all over the tiled floor.
“Are you done? Give it back.”
Lisa handed the comb back to the staring girls. Then she took out the bottle of Dove from her sack, and squeezed the pearl gel onto her hand. She awkwardly pulled open her bathing suit, and began to rub the soap onto her skin. Voices giggled and whispered from across the room, “How is she going to get clean like that?” Lisa looked up, and saw standing before her three pairs of perky breasts, narrow waists, and slim adolescent legs, all posed together. She looked down.
“You should take off your bathing suit,” a sweet voice declared.
“Oh! I don’t want to.”
“Haha! What are you worried about, dumb egg? We are all girls here!”
…….
In the mornings, Lisa takes the public bus to school. She gets on the 7:37 M101, and takes the second single seat behind the swirling middle, on the left side, by the window. The glass reflects her face onto the city, and the city reflects her thoughts onto her face. At a red light, when the buildings stop scrolling, she takes out her book, and attempts to do her homework.
Reconstruction. After the slaves were freed, the President wanted a sort of Reconstruction, which was weak, and the Radical Republicans wanted a sort of Reconstruction, which was radical.
A bunch of boys got on the bus at 125th street and Park Avenue. They chose the seats in front of her, in the swirling middle, the joint between the two cars of the bus, which scrunches like an accordion whenever the bus turns. The boys sat down. Their seats revolved like the Tea Cup Ride in carnivals.
“Yo man, your shoes are wack.”
“Nah, these are Tims.”
“What? Your mama bought you them?”
“Nah, she gave me the money.”
Lisa looked down at her history book. She needed to get her work done. She can’t concentrate at home because her computer distracts her. She can’t work elsewhere because she needs the computer to write her paper.
“Hey China!”
“She’s mad cute.”
“Her mama’s cute.”
“You can take the mama, and I got this one.”
Stupid middle school boys. Lisa wasn’t even going to look up. Reconstruction happened in the South, and there were Carpetbaggers and something else. They made money off the South. Democrats were Southern and Republicans were Northern. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. He was shot by an actor named something Wilkes Booth. Now Bush has the South, and he’s a Republican.
“Yo Chinita! Look Chinita!”
Out of the corner of her eye, Lisa saw one of the boys make a cross with his arms and hit his crotch. Suck my dick.
“Shutup!” Lisa blurted. Laughter. “Look, you made her mad.”
The Republicans were in the South and the Democrats were in the North. No, it’s the other way around. The North didn’t want slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a book called Uncle Tom’s Cabin which sold a million copies in a week, and she caused the Civil War, which Abraham Lincoln led. Except that there was a bloody Kansas and John Brown killed a lot of people at Harper’s Ferry.
“Baby, look at me, baby!”
“Fuck you.” She hates this! She hates this shit.
“ooooooOOOOO!” The boys whimpered, and laughed, and whimpered. “Ching chong maka hiya!”
“Shut up. Fuck you!”
She lives in Harlem but goes to a white school. Her best friend is white. She talks like a white girl. She has a nice cell phone. Black people are mean, and Asian people are dorky. But white people are somewhere in between.
“Haha! Look at me, bitch. Look at me!”
She swung around and punched him in the face.
“What the fuck?” He grabbed his bleeding nose. His boys were gathering around. Everybody’s yelling. That bitch just hit him. What the fuck? He was just playing around. Now the girl is crying. “Yo, my nose is bleeding like a mother.”
“Get off the bus. NOW!” The bus driver had a red mustache.
“Who? Me?”
Lisa got off the bus, and walked to school.
===============================================
3. some more old poems:
===============================================
“Friday Evening Over Grande Caramel Mochiatta”
Your fingers were locked with mine,
across the checkered Starbucks tabletop.
The coffee steamed between our faces,
and rose with our breath to fill the room.
We tapped our toes to the swelling jazz,
and slowly, gently, we let the week unravel and relax.
“Your eyes are like a planetarium…” you said,
“…your voice is like a waterfall,” I said.
Dipping into each other’s worlds,
we found our complete reflection.
When you smile, I can feel your dimples,
and your skin remembered on my fingertips.
I think of how our noses fit together when we kiss,
how my breath starts where yours ends, alternating.
How you melt everything to honesty, undress the anxious pretensions,
relieve me, lift me, so I’m raw, red, real, renewed, unashamed!
“Do you love me?” you’d ask, though you know,
“I love you,” I’d answer, and I know.
And we walk out into December Broadway,
giddy because your hand suits mine.
---------------------------------------
"Ma Dawn A / Whore"
A rat crawled out Her sour spot, and decked in colored suit,
Was wrinkled, arrogant, and foul, heavied from finding fruit.
And satisfied, he shed his skin as Serpent had his guise,
This little atom of a Grace was naked of his prize.
For he had fought and won his war, was hero of his garden!
And sailing home to Argos now, his victory was ardent.
Cassandra, Clytemnestra, oh whatever name - he knew it!
And knowing Good and Evil both, he upped his jeans, and flew it.
And angry Jill, who tumbled still, is lonely in descension,
For She, woman, just as Eve, bears beauty only virgin.
It matters not how broad the leaf, how charged the Serpent's venom
She is the sinner preordained: she is the salt of Sodom.
Oh, Second Thought of God, look not back to feel the falling!
Forget the face of Gabriel, forget this unfair walling.
Renounce the shame, forget his name, and be not Dido driven!
The gift if it was yours to give, is yours to be forgiven.
--------
"Untitled"
I am alive in a world that praises shadows.
Names that coin the disbelieving mind.
A check mark for every clean word that scrolls by:
old authors, classic believers, the shunned respected,
a history that surrounds me but is not mine,
sorrows of capital words for swarms of dissatisfied people.
To know is to make those shadows mine.
I knew a man who reached out to the world with deliberate flailing arms.
He wrote me, "The words are the dazzle of my body, and they supplant my mind."
He told me,"The voices sing through me and I set free their words."
He instructed me to tell you this.
Books are the clouds in the sky that comfort but can not hold.
I don't want comfort, I want the sky.
I don't want civilization, I want to be the burning wood that starts it.
I want to move in fire, as fish move in water, and sound moves the air.
I want to satisfy all abstractions that need answers: the suffering of people I will never know, the church that knocks on doors, the soldier that loads his gun, the lover that closes his eyes, the death, the buried thoughts.
For I can not be held.
Get out then, get out!
I yell at him.
But already, no one is here.
I am alone in the room, and
the walls are like the ocean floor.
I have never seen them.
-------------
"Narcissus wilts over a pool of gasoline"
Narcissus wilts over a pool of gasoline,
And stubbornly waits for reflection.
The swirling colors disagree, mock his rigid figure. He calls this terrorism.
He Prefers
Tall, Identical
Equal Perfections
Like, Himself. He calls this God.
Echo after echo must follow his mark,
As he hides and reveals, gives and takes, affirms and denies.
His new, clear beauty is a challenge for the mirror. He calls this liberty.
---------
"Subtraction"
I'm a mutilated pencil sharpener.
You twisted, twisted,
burned through the white paper
of my opened notebook.
The tequilla scraped me dry.
The friction robbed me of recollection.
In the quiet, you marked me.
You pig.
You probably had to staple me hard onto the floor,
probably had to fight me to straighten me
like paper clip.
I probably bit into your sour, scheming flesh
and kicked and screamed and scratched wild paper cuts.
Or maybe I didn't at all.
These scars you've raised on my skin:
cracked white-out, your criminal trademark.
I want to smash you.
Holepunch you, like you did me.
Rip you shameful shreds.
Instead, this odd longing. To mute myself.
You've scissored through me, and I am tossed away like old glue,
crusting, flaking, leftover.
===============================
4. excerpts from my RANT collection:===============================
"Quirk"
Every morning, when I get on the 7:37 M98 bus, I take the second single seat from the front, on the left side, by the window. The view from this seat is the exact view required for a good reading of the "AM New York."
Because the sun rises in the East, and gives light to the bold words and brash president on the front page, the sort of pristine light that supermodels and movie stars crave as they contemplate horizons on the beach.
Because it's an independent seat leaning left.
Because it's situated behind the driver and in front of the roaring engine in the rear; I think of it as a sort of Lower-Upper-Middle Class Academic seat, with a good view of the world on one side, a great view of the black iron curtain of vehicle leadership on the other, and an abstract view of the roaring engine in the rear.
Because it's one seat behind Rosa Park's choice, the choice that makes my choice possible.
Because it's both an aisle seat and a window seat, so I can be engaged in two worlds at once: the small world of my progressive bus, and the big world of my progressing city.
Because my paper and my situation are one and the same.
-----------------------------------------------------------
"Impregnable"
relieved
I’m running red again
and for a while
I might have been worried
seated soggy in the sick smell
of the saltiness
on the white bed-sheets and pink flowered blankets
nine times heaviness lifted
and the musty steam clouds
sliding up stretchy stomach skin
rubbing off the fingerprints and forgetting
for now, myself-
rum rising
nudging through nostrils
and plugging
everything
yesterday I heard a wailing
and I sprang out of me
straight through my wiry hair
and then I
shuddered
and shrank back
holding broken pieces
of sex
today the broken pieces sit in classified plastic:
color-coded
for safety
-------------------
"Rant #38"
when the blood runs, i call it an epiphany.
because all the bad emotions are cleared away,
and because i have an excuse for their having been there in the first place.
so i call it personal growth
because it "comes from within"
though it's fuming with hot anger of lost life:
washed out opportunities, and now these terrible aches,
oil on the face and new explosions
-but since i must go oni will. let the blank white paper catch my sin.
forget the month before and start again
dirty, wet, sexy, proud, my "friend."
----------------------------------------------------------------
"Rant # 29"
who is having fun?
i'm staring at the date. the shocking makes me cry. i want to shatter the clock and spill all the glassy numbers over my cowering body. i want to hold time to me. not as a measure of productivity - for suddenly i see nothing and i'm humbled so deep - But as a measure of dignity.
i question what is right in me. (and this investment's more than all of me.) i don't know where the differences lie between these souls and skins! but i'm not touching anything. i'm not feeling anyone. i'm just trickling emotionality, hit occasionally by bits and pieces of a chinese water torture reality: the excruciating rhythm of knowledge and self-discovery. and the sensation overwhelms me when it falls. i'm hovering excitedly over muffled, dark serendipity - accidentally skimming mechanic progress.
no thanks to conceptions, misconceptions, and re-conceptions of youth. that double-edged word, and the well-researched, well-dissected sciences that serve.oh, educate me, world! apparently, when i'm most lost, it's most typical, and most dismissable. provide no solutions. expect no variables. we are young! (we have all our lives to forget.) we are capable!
you're right. I am capable. of more than you detect. engrave that. perseverence is my fortunate escape. and i am stronger and far more tender than you know. my gift is all.
who isn't having fun? i've been Love. i'll do.
-------------------------
"Rant # 37"
When my stomach pulls like a violin
I'd hear the stitches snap
and all the old junk ironed tight to my belly
would peel, and my cries would fall out.
These clumsy patches so alien to my skin
would shatter on the floor. And I would be immortalized in the
temporary juxtaposition of
my pieces. For I am blurry, wet
thick-set, meditating my mess on yellow subway ads:
-these are the fog-faces (my whole life) outlined
- in the folds of someone's cordoroy coat
- yesterday's astrology reminded in an angry man's cologne, swiftly passing
- all my memories of existence hanging on the shine of a shapely black shoe
When the whole world moves, I can't catch up.
When I shiver, I'm barren again.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Tiny Rant #5"
The words have died, I'm dry in self-absorption.
The wind that blows the river keels the narcissist endeavors
Who upon closer reflection, politely withers
Away, for shame of wasted time
To waste more time for shame.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Ode to Morpheus, Morphine, Morph"
Exhausted, every muscle in my body sinks
Into the bed, stretchy but dry, like old dough.
My chamber crumbles inward with each painful blink:
A hole in the sand, and all the grains run, fair and slow.
My pillow is a whirlpool where my senses slide.
Bottomless silk swallow my mind in sweet fiat.
Let blissful dark release me into Lethe tides:
All of my hair, in freeflowing streams, like wild thoughts.
--------------------------
"Tiny Rant #19"
red life lines flow nowhere, these are the promises
i sign to myself, drawing
natural paint for the perfect sunset
railroad tracks on my arms, driving away into the sunset
like a cowgirl, hiding
in dust and ghosttowns, the metal star
----------------------
"High" (a loving nursery rhyme to my beloved baby: Horace Mann)
Frenzy-time, she climbed, we climbed
Up on the hill where the digital chimed,
Ding dong, electric gong
Spitting out numbers all day long.
Crazy Kate, who's always late
Stumbled through the metal gate,
Up the step and by the rep,
She clapped her classes cleppity-clep.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
Likes to think that she is scary.
Dan, Fran, Pan, Jan
Sat together hand-in-band.
Billy Boo with Silly Sally,
Down the hill, they liked to dally,
Rising up their very own way,
It's all good, it's all okay.
And every time the clock strikes nine,
In with the new and out with the fine.
Untimely, how the earth can turn
When everyone's still here to learn.
---------------
"rant # 51: rain"
maybe when I’m taking a long shower
I could wash it all down and out of
myself, who
in the soapy mess dripping
down my legs
could sing a few minutes with no
clothes on
the water hammering on my back
can explode the shape out of me
through the flying droplets
and reduce me to my
fullest smallness
where I am hugged by warm streams
flowing unconditional out my hair ends
reflecting
only the round empty spaces I
can fill
and maybe
before
breakfast, I could
share with my-
self, a
little decency.
--------------------------------
"Rant #57: pity fuck"
What I remember was a waxy sort of bed.
Your head five inches or so away from mine. Five
fog-heavy inches and one fire in between.
I hovered in that stratosphere, camouflaged as your
ex-girlfriend on an open recline. While we openly dined
on refried love and teatime mixed messages: fondling memories
and massaging ourselves sick with make-do remedy.
"Rant #2: Long Distance Love"
Long-distance love is like hugging a storybook ghost.
A combination of hormones
and memories
and fantasies.
I'm afraid with time,
I'll forget who
you are
and you
will slowly grow
out of me, grow
out of
us.
And then
we'll be wearing our relationship
like
a shrunken sweater:
the sleeves
receding
to our elbows, and
squeezing
us in,
and
immobilizing us,
while
the lovely yarn stretches 'til the last thread breaks.
------------------------------------------------------
"Break Up Poem"
I
Am
Nostalgic
and gently unraveling these memories of you and gently putting them away. conclusion. calm calm. break up. like striking the set at the end of the show: putting away the pieces of furniture, the props, the costumes - each object a story we shared. the bright lights all get taken down. but the applause still itches in my ears, echoing from the empty seats, from the phantoms smiling in the house after the hour is done and the coats are put on...some things are sacred to this big black theater room. you and me. we had a story under limelight.
love. did i ever know it?
you seem to know so much better than I do. tell me, i don't understand: how can we both have undergone the same experience and now both come out with such different conclusions?
about the word. love.
i must have failed you in. love. i'm almost
sorry for.
love.
================
5. potpourri: 10 quotes i love from pieces i hate
===============
"Elementary Invasion" (my first slam poem)
squeeze
green putty oozing out of my hands
and hugging my fingers cold and rubbery
escaping
my silly efforts to contain
or hold
I mean to run away.
slash
beat brick-breasted into the Earth until the ground is pink and exhausted
delighted
in my misshapen pieces
and applauding
I mean to dig away.
chop and dice
flipping pancakes over to listen to them sizzle on the other side
like opening soda cans
or a whip
foaming
running thick and white
then wipe me all over your kitchen table!
press me into myself!
you're melting now
but when the lava cools
you'll be hovering over me, a solid, cold encasing
and I’ll be lying sweaty underneath the ceiling fan
I’ll smile up at your metal
twisting
humming painful
of virginity like a chainsaw
you’re a tornado hovering above my head
that’s dizzying me to submission
I meant to run away.
----------------------
1.
"For forty days and forty nights it rained upon the world. And two of every kind, bathed in the filth of commonality, filled His ark. Your body is my food. Your body is my food. One animal resisted the temptation of another. And from that floating orgie of holy prophecy became the world."
- from "Ever's Revenge", my first attempted play
------------------------
2.
EVER:
first love is like the garden of eden. beautiful and oblivious. we discover all the birds and beasts, and we give them names. everything is new. and comes without toil. because perfection is the state of pure inexperience; of not having experienced or imagined anything better. babies are perfect. first kiss is perfect. first sex is painful. but perfect.
..........
i wanted to know. beyond the vision of perfection we've created for ourselves, what love is and could be. i wanted to experience first hand, whatever the fruit is. whatever i'm risking. no regret... except the pain i'm causing you.
...'cause then we fell. and now all pretty new things come by toiling. if we want a new relationship, we have to struggle to create it. we have to give new names to new creatures, and we have to suffer the pain of giving birth to new memories. the burden of nursing new relationships, of sharing our bodies with new strangers, new stranger memories laid upon old estranged stories. and so we've been kicked out of naivety, forced to separate from the source of our dependency: each other. but all before we've ever truly learned self-sufficiency. so this is a fight for independent identity. it's lonely fighting for a return to eden, with a different name.
...because I am still not separate from you. you are me. always.
...i am eve, not God. don't blame me.
...first love provided the definition. and this will always be the model to which i compare all my future experiences. i wonder if i can ever reach the same perfection. or if perfection by definition requires that first oblivion.
...maybe true love can only be first love. because once you know you're naked, it's just embarrasing. you can't repeat it without ignorance."
- more from "Ever's Revenge"
---------------------------------
3.
"Quote me on penis envy...vaginal love is far more intense but far less focused. it's a suffering. a dizzing. a dying of the world. walls are moved, horizons broken; it's unbearable. i want the MALE love for the rhythm I can control. i want to take charge of the dance. it's a power thing. i could be a gay woman but never a gay man."
- from "Vagina Dialogues," my second unfinished play
---------------------------
4.
"I can't guarantee that what I remember is greater than what I've forgotten. But I want the simplicity of faith, one Ear to direct my thoughts to, one train of thought...Ambition is the harshest vanity. Planning loses reality. For me, my life wheels on like a dream. Like I've lost all creativity....Calm Calm. I want one thought to unburden my whole mind."
- from "Words on Wheels," my third attempt at playwriting gone wrong
-------------------------
5.
"If you love me -
- then i don't worry. i don't question. i don't talk a word.
- i just give. whatever you need. i will give."
- written on the wall of Maia's bathroom: from "Maia's Room," my first attempted screenplay
-----------------
6.
"I love you more than what fears, mistakes, hurts, and the prickly-fired baggage we each carry can dare undo. Through and through and thoroughly. Enough love to cure the ringing absence. My thumb's pulse squeezed onto your hand: a million apologies for bad thoughts."
- mushy stuff from "Maia's Room"
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7.
"love backwards is evol. like evil. like half of evolution. half-baked. half-grown. half-perfection. that's the opposite of love. half-success. because love is fullness: either fully full or fully empty. nothing in the middle. and evol is the opposite."
- more mushy stuff from "Maia's Room"
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8.
"Mimi:
Kim, nobody loves me. It's Valentine's Day, and I don't have a valentine!
Kim:
So masturbate"
- from "Asian Girls," my most recent screenplay
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9.
"Kim:
Ask a guy out on a simple little date, and he thinks you're crazy 'bout him!
Eesh...listen boy, this is just a job interview. Don't flatter yourself. I make the rules.
And if you wanna be a good candidate, send me a good resume."
- from "Asian Girls"
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10. "Mimi:
Je veux te fuckre...donne-moi l'asse..."
- from "Asian Girls"
