and then

it was over

your letters no longer haunting my shadow

your rhythm no longer dictating my steps

it doesn't hurt like it used to

because i don't remember what you felt like

inside me

anymore

love is not enough.

it does not solve any problems

just offers new questions

it is not sufficient

because if it was

my first love would not have left

without a trace

and my second love

would be here with me now.

it is not an end

but a beginning

and i have yet to find the end of the road.

time still passing.

my heart still clenches when i seehearread your name.

even if it's someone else with your name

and the signs aren't even signifying you.

it feels like my heart puts on a wool turtleneck on a NY summers day

and heat can only escape out the top

as steam rises.

overflowing.

i shake it off.

because now you're not the first thing to come to mind

when i fill my Brita

or take the N train

or sleep

i lost the wallet you hated

and my phone stopped working so your angry bird scores

aren't there to remind me

of your superiority.

but i still don't venture farther east on the L train

and i still don't eat mac n cheese

and i still don't know what to say.

i just know that i can't say "you're breaking up" on the phone

whenever static interferes

without my voice mimicking the waves quiver.

a year ago

on a sunday evening

i was sitting across the bed from you

in the guest room

of my parents house

finding ways to compactly transport my life

back East.

it went something like this:

fold, stuff, sigh, kiss.

we managed to sneak lips

between tending to the empty cavities

left by my shoes.

people who get up and leave are good at

filling the contours with whatever will fit.

mostly the little things

like lingerie.

there was too much baggage to just jump and fly.

your hair was longer, mine was shorter.

there were no twists in strands

or kinks in tow.

i made you put on a red v neck shirt i made

to declare our post (ambivalence)

when really,

i wanted to stay but needed to go.

and you let me.

cast away

next week, i am holding auditions to fill the spot you left.

in search of:

a man who would propose the night before prom

and hit the road two days later.

a man who loves his freedom

to beat his rhythm on the road

and the ones he loves.

a beast in bed and a giant in gentile mannerisms

a solipsistic selfish ego

who would rather stroke himself to sleep

than sacrifice his dreams for love

of anything other than his country.

this man was all you

and none of you, at once

he was all the catharsis and none of the conscious

he was all the action and none of the forethought

he was all the soldier and none of the fighter.

but you were just as lost as he

and i just as lost in you

as she

and you left

to find yourself

or greater

meaning

or something, anything else

and for all of the moves i make on a daily basis

i couldn't choreograph the tide that would pull you towards the horizon

the haze where you would blur into the atmosphere

leaving only fog and perspective

no lines culminating at an origin

no beginnings

just the end.

and

if i asked you, you would say you left for me

to save me

from myself when i was with you.

that it was for the best.

but

somehow when you didn't look back

once you stepped on that train

that would take you away

i knew

i knew that that would be the last time i would see you

that i would interlace my fingers in the small of your back

that i would nuzzle my forehead into your sternum

that you would exhale in my ear

that you would run the backs of your knuckles along my cheekbone

that i would smell your cologne mixed in your sweat

that you would pierce me

with your eyes first and your body later

that your fingers would trace the outline of our trauma on my torso

that you would hold me through the night

i knew

because it was the same look you gave me that night in Barcelona

the day you put me on a bus to Charles de Gaulle

the night you drove your Civic away from the back of French House

the day in the psychologists office

the time you stood in your Santa undies in my loft

when i came home to toothpaste residue where your brush used to be

i got used to you looking at me like you were never going to see me again.

but even that got old

and though i knew, there was nothing i could do.

Cultural Property?

Recently been watching plays with "deep cultural roots"...

But as performance studies and the Humanities have taught me, any broad statement like that will get you in trouble. So let me specify:

I saw In the Red and Brown Water, part of the Brother/Sister plays trilogy by Tarell Alvin McCraney at the Marin Theater Company in Mill Valley, CA and tonight I saw Fela! The Musical on Broadway.

Both plays ignited that subtle disturbance within me--

questioning the extent to which the plays exotified and essentialized

Black, African, African-American culture

for the white consumer audience.

From the face paint and wooden masks on the set of Fela! to the gospel soundtrack of Water, I struggle with the fact that these identifiable aesthetic forms seem to have been co-opted for the capitalist market it serves-- one that so far, by observation, is primarily white, upper-middle class, and interested in learning about the "struggle" and "corruption" in Africa. Boo hiss.

At the same time, and I'll be honest, another part of me revels in the fact that these forms are being exhibited to this audience at all. That in some way, this problematic (read: colonized?) representation of this demographic is a step above not being represented at all. On top of this, tonight Fela! asked for a higher degree of participation from the audience, as the actor instructed this stiff crowd in how to shake their hips. I have yet to conclude whether the participatory element enhanced or detracted from the power relationship between audience and performers.

However, none of this waxing philosophical is trumped by the fact that in a 200 person audience at MTC I was sitting next to the only two Black men in the front row--that is, until they were asked to leave because the white couple who bought those seats finally showed up. Sorry man, no room for you here.

I want to be able to look beyond the racial makeup of an audience, and yet I can feel that there is something fundamentally wrong (read: eerily reminiscent of historical precedent) about plays that are so culturally specific being presented to a completely alien audience. I mean really, a bunch of white people gawking at the spectacle of people of color on stage performing their "culture"? No thank you.

fleet weak

what kind of world is it

when i can sit on a boat

with friends and family

watching the blue "angels" demonstrate

our nation's military might

when others fear their death at the same sight?

thirty years later and my father

snaps shots of smoke trails

left by the very planes he used to watch level his home

laying waste to a land where freedom

came to play