The Massacre One Morning Of The Ancestors

We arrive on our spaceships
Highest of hopes and good intentions
We plant our gardens vast and green
Harvest our grapes and olives and corn
We build our cities tall and white
Stretch out the road, through land and space
Pointing -- "Hark, the promise of it!"

The monuments we raise, tempting fate,
We scrawl our names over them,
Condemning ourselves.

Here comes the army now
The angry, quill and brush wielding legions
Remembering us hateful, our own children
They paint our gardens and cities and roads
with their ever-growing palettes of words and colors,
But we recognize none of it.
Were not our sylvan-scapes pleasing?
Were not our Babylons and Romes pleasing?
Were they not the fruit of honest toil and imaginations as bright as any's?
Were not our hopes and intentions high and good?

I am old now, I am your mother and father
Baffled by your condemnation
Head on the chopping block, but
Was I not yesterday a promise, a hero?

Go and see!:
My name,
the now-ashen monument, still standing, if bowed and melancholy, in the center of town
bears it!

Alas, and at that, the ax falls:
"It is your fault, these miseries: these ill-conceived cities, these poorly managed gardens, these inefficient roads. One must pay for errors in judgement and deficiencies in information."

It's a bloodbath to make Robespierre blush --
The baby-faced victors, they arrogantly brandish their advantages, youth and no damned Congressional Record.
To be something other than the tormented practitioner, living in the gray,
Was not our lot.
God forgive us for our ignorance, we suppose, but
We stand proudly by our lives --
Even as we damaged, we repaired
And even as we destroyed, we created,
Which is the story of our race, the young ones will soon see.
- - -
Ah! How can I?
Defame the wombs and truncate the loins
Of teachers, explorers, innovators, and artists?
How can I bear their shamed confusion as they are led to slaughter,
the Old Guards, which were, one must remember, at one moment, the New Guards?

"Did I not yearn and strive," they ask me,
"Much as you. Did I not ponder stars and with a butterfly net, chase them, much as you?
Did I not encounter puzzles in new places, puzzles without a key, that I struggled to answer, but likely failed to understand, much as you?"

As they set to us these questions,
Which we answer with silent, stony piety and a finger toward the history books, the verdict,
Our own children look on.

They are sharpening their pencils and wetting their brushes,
Already conspiring against us and our endeavors.
They know, as we knew, that the battle has already been taken.
They will prevail.
With their vigor and technologies from on high and lessons learnt at a tender age from our own missteps,
They will prevail.

Reservoir

With every lash
(And there were many:
There were the raspberry stripes due her,
But also those she bore for the temptresses, ingenues, and bitches
To whom she had given agency)
With every one
It seemed like she was opened,
Stretched a little further
On the medieval machine.
Given the ability to feel more and more
And overwhelmingly more.

Now she has this great reservoir in her chest,
Poorly supported by loose flesh,
Of surplus emotion --
Emotions that don't even belong to her! --
And she is terrified
Of the person who will
Come and with his dynamite kisses
Fell the great wall
And be her ruin
Loosing the flood,
Drowning the voice of her better judgment
That has labored for so long buttress the vulgar dam
(But her dam, nonetheless).
Some call it bounty
But she's afraid of it --
Afraid of a crack, rumble, and spontaneous dissolution
Of many moons of blood, sweat, and tears
Wrought by the hand of someone who may
Or may not be aware
Of the power of his touch.

Map-makers

Map-makers
Charting the stars,
The mountains and oceans
The movements of our ancestors and ourselves.

Likewise, color-coding our bodies,
Our temples,
Graphing the subtle clicks and turns of our hearts
And testing for the tripwires of our minds.

Extracting meaning from the random,
Creating coherency from absurdity.
Measured music; balanced portraits;
Exposition, Mounting Action, Climax, Resolution.
Formulas and chronologies,
Created in frustrated attempt to understand ourselves.

All the while, trying to accept
The futility of our endeavors
To conquer the unknowable.
Trying to find a way
To love ourselves and love eachother
Because
(rather than 'in spite')
Of our limitations,
And our potential --
Who knows which of the two is more difficult to live with?

My Body Climbed a Mountain

My body climbed a mountain
The tallest in this country.

This body that I thought was my ball and chain
It carried me up a mountain
The tallest in this country.

In front of this alien mask
Through the looking glass
Wishing it ill
Hating the soft places

It stifled my Spirit of St. Louis
Kept my red-letter flight grounded
It corrupted movements of sentiment
And made me vulnerable to the vagaries
Of men's attentions
And women's criticisms
And a brutal moral climate.

Vulnerable is not my color.

I resented it, even as I exploited it.

But my body climbed a mountain, I said.
The tallest in this country.

We worked together,
My mind and my body,
Over boulders and through falls
And at the summit,
We communed
For the first time in many years.

Vahaza Woman

Vahaza woman
Donnez-moi; Donnez-moi; Donnez-moi
Les bonbons (literal or figurative, one never knows)
Eyes - in them a melange of desire and self-contempt, bitterness and is that a pinch of malice? -
On les grandes seins
Comme tous les images de
The apple-pie Jezebels,
The fertile blow-up dolls
Who shake their Vahaza goods
On all the televisions
Every night,
From hill to dale
Translucent tits paired with hot-cross-buns.

Yum Yum.

Or half the body for half the price -
Cropped at neck and knee -
No need for these -
Too tough to chew through.

These eyes want the prime rib, baby.
Only the best cut for this fine gentilhomme.
Would you like me to trim the fat?

Vahaza woman
Humanitarian or harlot?
Il n'import quoi.

Snap.Snap.Snap.
Raise your eyes.
My mouth is moving,
Asking questions, telling stories, proving my personhood, something divine.
In between my chin and my nose.
Northward troops!
You're getting warmer.

What do you see when you look at me?
Damn sure it's not capability,
Or heart and mind riddled with funny notches (won't call them scars) borne of absurdities,
Or contradictions of unflagging tenderness in my spleen but gravel in my gut,
That, if you bothered, you'd understand were far from contradictions.

But you see a blur of white, indistinct,
(Because we all look the same, you admit as much)
You see a lasso in my hand to capture the stars for which you're straining
(You want the Big Dipper; No interest for the Southern Cross).
I am simply the means
To achieving dreams.

But I am not a tool.
This is not cultural insensitivity --
This is me
Telling you
That I will not be the object of either your fears or desires.
Re-pocket your hand; I will not be your garden hoe or milk cow.
I will be but your equal; ax sharpening ax.
I will be but your equal; flint against stone, together performing impossible, making magic.
I will be but your equal; our unique wisdoms paired for stunning clarity.

So retrain your eyes -
Find my mind, the seat of my history and my potential -
And we, together, maybe,
Can then begin to heal.

I Think You Must Be Savage

“What have the Christians brought us? The concept of hell and the fear of death.”
-- Anosy elder

My family has a painting of an Anglo-Saxon Christ on their mantel. (Their conduit to salvation looks suspiciously colonial).

My little sisters love playing with my hair and my mother loves braiding it. They tell me it is beautiful and glisse (just like their poupees).

My mother plays me high church canons that she has saved on her cell phone. (Why are they un-translated and why are there no original Malagasy hymns to sing on Sunday?)

I was expected to make a contribution (a significant contribution) to my grandmother’s charity – the object of which is to build a new Lutheran church in a “poor, remote village”. At the charity luncheon, I was the only vazaha.

The good vazaha who is expected to nonchalantly present 10,000 ariary to the dear people of the poor, remote village to help them find God. Bring the babies to me, let me hold them and kiss them. The vazaha with the silky hair and the slender nose and the lacquered pout lips will bless the babies and good fortune will be upon them. Would you like a picture? I would like a picture to remember those I have pointed to salvation. I need it for my newsletter, which I write to inform the brethren of my Good Deeds in the Lands of the Lost, the Lands of the Possessed. Did you know you were possessed, sir? Possessed with deamons sent from the Devil to trap you in your loincloth and lice? You must be possessed, because you think that the earth gives you life, which is the creed of the Blinded Pagan. Don’t be a disciple of the Devil, good man. It will land you in hell! Be a disciple of Christ.

You don’t know what hell is? It is a place for the wicked; a place which cannot be described it is so frightful. Christ will keep you from the flames, if you cling to Him. How? Invite him into your heart. Repeat this prayer and be baptized. Hone your faith through memorization and practice of the Scriptures.

Well, some of them. The Old Testament is a little dusty, so we’ve made for you a list of the pertinent rules…pork is economically important and quite delicious (as are shellfish), so disregard rules concerning the avoidance thereof. We don’t have priests anymore (only the Catholics have those, and they worship Mary and the Saints – should be avoided), so don’t bother yourself with discussion of the sons of Aaron, et al. However, if the rule is in regard to sexual relations, you ought to pay attention. There is a small chapter on the subject we have chosen to respect in Leviticus – be careful you find the right one…it is hidden deep amongst other silly passages that are irrelevant to the modern man and you wouldn’t want to make a mistake. Additionally --

What have you heard? Ah, love for one’s neighbor. Loving your neighbor is important, you’re right, but saving his soul is paramount – that end cannot be compromised. Don’t be soft, man!

Speaking of which: sir, what do you do for a living? You grow manioc?

I think you must be poor, sir. Can you afford a dress comme ça for your wife and daughters? Can you buy shoes? What, sir? You wife makes your clothes? You share shoes? Tstststststs. That, sir, that is what we call poverty in the United States, my land which flows with milk and honey (mind you, it’s all privately owned, the milk and honey, not owned by me, necessarily).

You know, sir, I have shown you the One True God with my 10,000 ariary, but I can show you wealth as well. I can show you prosperity – for that is what the Lord desires for His Chosen Children. Thrift and industry! Efficiency and progress! Modernity and morality!

See that yonder mine?

That yonder mine, where the minerals are scraped out of the earth (Remember, the earth is inanimate. Cast off your Pagan sentimentalities!) – that mine is where you will find prosperity. Leave your paltry fields and turn toward the sun. You will make enough paper money to buy your manioc…and dresses and shoes and butter and televisions and taxi cab rides.

You don’t want to leave your paltry fields? That is what we call sloth in the United States, land of milk and honey. That is what we call a poor work ethic, lack of gumption, not appreciating Western technological benevolence. Do you want to be poor forever? Do you not want dresses, shoes, butter, televisions, taxi cab rides? No?

Then I think you must be a savage.

“Maintenant, tu peux voir que les gens de Madagascar sont trop pauvre, oui? Pas comme Washington. Nous sommes très pauvre ici. Tu dois être très content que tu es une Américaine, oui ?” my host mother asks me. Yes Neni, these people are poor – poor in spirit, in intelligence, in amenities – I am so glad that I am an American. I am so glad to have the truth.

“Poor wretches,” thinks the vazaha.

Growth and Subsistence

I've been in Madagascar for two weeks and two days now.

I was encouraged, before I left, to "absorb now, process later". It's impossible. 'To process,' for me, is synonymous with creation. We absorb and then create -- using different media, of course -- I use language to create an image of the personal evolution I sense transpiring as I see (the sunsets at Acouba, the sand at Libanouna, the street vendors, the port at dusk, and the sunken ships), feel (moist heat, hands on my waist at L'Hotel Gina, mosquitos, the trade winds, my burning lungs at the summit of Pic St. Louis, a new cockroach friend down my shirt), smell (mofo akondro, her sweat, his sweat, my own sweat, the outhouse, ylang ylang blossoms, aloe), hear (Tay be!, incontrollable laughter, zebu, roosters at 5am -- Transylvania should invest in a couple and let them run around back circle...fewer students would miss class -- Salame vahaza!), and taste (zebu, rice, rice, rice, brown rice, rice water, lentils, dust, hint of mint -- not my own). I become despondent when I can't enjoy my process, enjoy my creation. I become despondent when my words cannot make known to you the effect of these miracles, all around, that are seeping into me, that I am photosynthesizing, like the peeling trees, through the skin and into the unknown places, changing the composition of my head and heart.

For this reason, I'm finding it incredibly difficult to transition into exclusively speaking French and Malagasy. My desperate and battered words can't evoke anything but laughter...they don't draw pictures...they do not synthesize subtle, nuanced sentiment...they turn my heart into something almost vulgar and incoherent. I cannot focus on theme; I must focus on conjugations and articles and sentence structure. I cannot create with these words...I can only cling-for-my-life. I can subsist but I cannot grow.

And that hints to a more fundamental problem, perhaps. I become despondent when I feel I am not growing.

But I know that stillness is not stagnation...I talk about it all the time. One can certainly experience a swelling of the spirit within physical subsistence. Have I told you of the marriage of two halfs, yin and yang, the arrow and the orb? Have I told you how much I want to realize this union in my person? Have I described a picture of God, balanced and whole, fully empowered and how I want to understand?

Ironically, Madagascar is, both for logistical and cultural reasons, forcing me to be still. It's forcing me to spend a lot of time in my head. I have not been able to hide from things that I hoped would remain stateside. And it is clear that those things from which I'd hoped to hide are hands-down the most critical to explaining who I am.

I didn't leave bad habits or insecurities. I must have hid them, subconsciously, in a invisible zippered pocket in my enormous internal frame backpack. My security blankets.

I didn't "leave my past behind". I am the product of twenty years of roll-with-the-punches "past"...and I couldn't very well leave me behind. So along the past came.

No conclusion here. Only a final observation: I am both growing and subsisting. I don't understand it entirely -- a clever trick that the Divine can pull -- but I have faith. Specifically, I have faith that subsistence isn't a punishment and that the growth it stimulates is of an unfamiliar type. I have not experienced this type of growth, and I feel the pains of it (remember when we would wake up howling, clutching our legs when we were eleven?), the pains of mind and body shifting and grinding into new positions, shooting through my whole body. I am malformed, I fear, because I haven't known growth through subsistence. Not malformed forever though. I'm confident my body can correct itself. Our bodies are all so resilient, you know.