keeping it cute

I wish it had been a dream I could just wake up from. All the men were women, the women men. Not in the ugly way unfunny comedians have been mocking gender expression forever, but in a real way: when women are growing in beard hairs and men can't stop crying for no reason, run through with rage, nausea, rolling on the floor with cramps. Exhausted from years of worried sleeplessness, trying to take care of everyone and everything, but having to keep it cute. That's what it was like.

I knew I was at home because my neighborhood carves its name into the walls, burns it into subway cars and somehow manages to rust it onto metal siding. We out here: Sunset Park. The real ones in the sacrifce zones– I'm not talking about the white women who just moved here from Missouri to swan down our streets with matching coats and bags dressed inappropriately for the weather talking about "j'adore" some shit they saw on the street— they love our local color. I'm not talking about them, just us. (Though, to be fair, we're all breathing in the same higher-than-citywide-average levels of particulate matter so I guess she is one of now us too.)

Us is anyone who's ever been out here fighting for their lives, those of us who have to check the demographic boxes on all the forms: Black, brown, disabled, other. It used to be illegal to even ask about race or gender, intrusive questions about my sex life. Legally, no one could be denied access or employment for reasons of disability, country of origin, native language, annual income, education level, political ideology or religion. That's what they said anyway, that not asking about those things would make life more fair.

I've always checked multiple boxes on those identity things, never just one, but many. Now those forms are electronic and demand compliance: there's no advancing without answering their yes/no questions, submitting to the binary. Worse than their forms is the constant surveillance, the biometric theft and DNA sampling. Someone's making determinations about who we are and what we're capable of, whether we belong and are deserving of care or not. I don't think it's up to them to decide who gets to eat, who gets to live, who merits protection. We all do, all of us.

I don't want to have to keep arguing about this. I'd prefer to just make something beautiful while I'm here, to show what's so obvious and evident to me. Something that makes me or someone else feel happy for a minute. To feel refreshed and at ease, to have a laugh instead of always feeling under threat. To see the sky again, the stars while we can still see them. All that light has been trying to get to us, traveling here for billions of years. Doesn't that mean anything to anyone? When we light candles in this darkest time, we are not only creating light, we're also calling it down, we're summoning it, anchoring ourselves in our commitment to light, to what we truly are, what's essential. Every light festival ever is happening right now. Ask anybody. Nvm, no, don't. Don't listen to them, listen to me. Everybody's got a different story— they'll tell you the celebration of light and spiritual source, the wisdom and love that is anchored in everyone isn't what it is. They'll call our worship the celebration of a military victory or consumerism, reframe our divinity as something profane. Something money lenders and corruption, something cruelty and power-over. This isn't that. That's over.

So there I was, just walking right up to some guy. I knew I was in Sunset Park, my home, so whoever this guy was, he was a neighbor. Even if I don't know you, we're here so we're all related somehow. If not by blood or heart than by circumstance, accident. What is our connection? That's what I was trying to find out. How do I know you? He seemed pleased that I was approaching him, smiling in the eyes. I should have followed my first mind. I'm old enough to know better than to approach men who are just out standing on the street like that. He wasn't smoking or on a device, didn't seem to be waiting for anything, just standing there looking at me. We didn't have much to say to each other, but it wasn't unfriendly. The feeling was warm and welcoming, I felt drawn in. This is backwards though, I'm the one who's supposed to draw people in. I'm the one with the warm, welcoming aura, what is this? I felt magnetized and kind of pissed off about it— he's definitely not my type. I'm not even looking for— It was nothing really. Nothing happened, it's probably not even worth mentioning. 

Eventually I made my way home, back to where I stay, gazing out the couple windows on the front of the apartment at the world going by without me. It seems like every season people are putting up new inflatables in front of their buildings these days, on their rooftops. Looking out, I saw three inflatable bears on an apartment building a few blocks over that seemed to be dancing in the wind with the skeleton and scythe-wielding reaper that were still holding court across the street. What season is this? Doubled-over Santas after a long night out, animatronic reindeer skeletons lit up from the inside. It's wild out here. I don't know quite what to make of it. It's not just the 30-foot skeletons and random fake mailboxes marked Letters to Santa that are disorienting, it's really the fact that I can see through people now, I see them shifting and changing in real time. 

I don't mean it like seeing auras or their spirit team around them, I mean physically. I see women who are men and men who are women and people who are both and neither— that's no big deal, it's  always been that way, the thing that's different lately is the way I finally see other people not being locked into identities they need to defend. That's new here. Finally! There's nothing to fight about anymore. People are finally getting it, that we're all related and we're all going to be dead.

Look back at the old home movies and you may find that your friends and family are dead. The people with the money, dead. The people who were so sexy & didn't fuck with you, dead. Loved and hated, dead. Everyone. All the suffering involved in love and loss is always happening everywhere to everyone. Even here, right now. Can we talk about that? About how we're treating each other? Building up some and laying others low, exploiting, coercing, extracting and worse. Data Centers and Kessler effect making the air unbreathable for everyone, all of life. 

I've been told to get off my soapbox and get a get a real job or at least a few lucrative side hustles. I hear there's good money in content creation, but poems don't seem to count as content. (William Carlos Williams called it, "It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.") I hear UGC marketing is where it's at, but why should I be helping corporations sell their products to consumers when we're struggling to survive, fighting for our lives? The kids haven't figured out yet that they're going to have to pay taxes on those 'gifts' they got, all that UGC loot: bags of chips and energy drinks delivered to their door. It's not free, you're not "killing it," you're being exploited. Who's going to tell them? Making little videos about your wealth journey, the trips to Paris, rail thin, sipping green juice, all your twenty-something thoughts about fashion and lifestyle— not to yuck anyone's yum, but I don't care about your six figures because what's all that money going to get you when you can't breathe? Nothing. Nothing at all. It doesn't fucking matter. 

Maybe I could become an ultra high net worth individual in 7 years if I stick to the script and cling to that timeline. I've got the hunger and resilience that trust-fund artists lack. But if I'm honest, I don't give a shit about that. I just don't. I love what money can do, but it's not the money itself that I'm after. True freedom is something different, I swear it. Look at the billionaire class and they'll show you how not free they are— consumed with their own greed and regrets, made delusional by their inflated sense of self-importance. It's not going to end well for them. Why would I want that? I don't.

Just let me curl up with a good book or movie, music, something to take my mind off the constant threat of violence and menace, the poison in the air. Two more mass shootings and a double homicide grabbed headlines just the other day, but not for long. No mention at all of the wind patterns or the earthquakes in Alaska equidistant to Giza, Angkor Wat and the Nazca lines. What's important to most people hasn't been what's important to me. Tears freezing to my face.