A Response To Hedonism

“Hedonism comes naturally to men. At the sound of a key turning, a man has locks all over his body. But women are numb or liars or never stop thinking, you can not make me stop thinking”

--Anne Carson “An Anthology of Water” Plainwater

I think maybe you date yourself Anne.

I think men were different back then

in the 80’s or maybe the 90’s too

they were simpler,

or rather, love came to them easier

making love was easier.

Ronald Reagan gave them a collective boner.

The cold war shaped a much different masculinity. It was rough. It was capitalist.

I think it involved torn blouses and popped buttons in the back of Chevys.

Even if you were gay or a minority it didn’t matter,

same key, same slot, somewhere between

the heart and the gut.

I’m not that guy.

I sexually matured after 9/11. I think when the towers fell

American men became impotent.

en masse,

I think it was the ultimate blow to our collective phallus,

I think

terrorists killed my sex life.

Hedonism does not come naturally to me.

I have enjoyed some "sexual" situations with some lovely individuals,

who could hear the jingle when we pressed together—

tangled chains slipping from bruised locks under my chest.

(It is entirely crucial you know the truth)

In the 2000s, masculinity is all about constructing a hyper-reality.

I think it involves posting half-naked pictures with nameless women on Facebook.

I can not stop thinking Anne.

Hedonism is taken up by the richest and the poorest and none is left for the middle.

They even sent us to war Anne,

our fathers and grandfathers with their raging Reagan boners, but we

couldn’t finish the job so we lied and blamed women,

said it was women’s fault, but it is the men,

the men who can not figure it out,

we can not find the slot Anne. Our fathers and grandfathers and

founding fathers and Great Fathers and surrogate fathers

tell us to shut up and get our rocks off but they

can not make us stop thinking Anne.

They can not make us stop thinking.

They can not make us stop thinking.

They can not make us stop thinking.

The Drifter's Lover: A Very Deviant Sonnet

She said aloud: the clothes on the man do not make or break,

The clothes don’t even matter,

Just look through the rags and tatter.

Lose the obsession with fashion, new skins, new realities to fake.

She said aloud: I learn to live one way in the gaps

Of definite address, physical location, close proximity,

I learn another in the eras of disappearance, of no trace, no vicinity.

There’s no doubt the repetition wears me down, these laps—

Through tears, reunions, bargains, tears, sex, tears, patterns circle like a wheel.

She said aloud, despite no one on the subway platform wanting to listen:

It pains me how everybody finds it so easy to dismiss him,

But I will never buy him the new threads he prefers to steal.

What matters is how the holes along the seams yield to my fingers,

How the steam from the bath where I wash him engulfs us and lingers.

Heavier Than The Hudson

Planes get me excited like discotheques. My ears are popping like genitals. He sits cool like a Hindu god, gives out hands like candy at a parade. She’s sharp like a Colorado pine, drops needles like tears all down her dress at weddings. I’m lowbrow like wrestling federations. He’s refined like folded napkins. She’s campy like Oscar Wilde and a certain movie starring Tim Curry.

Our love flies to New York like a river. We live in simile like sin. We might marry into metaphor someday. That’s heavier than the Hudson baby. That’s some deep bullshit.

PRAGUE TIME

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5KiroJk_VE&feature=related

After having done "I never saw another butterfly" at American University, GHM, our professor, took ten of us to Prague over spring break. It was my job to film and document the trip, and create this video now being used on the American Website. I worked for 2 months compiling and putting together, and I hope you enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c4uCoyTs24

This is my final video project this semester. I wrote, directed, and edited the piece. We still have work to do on it, but as my first piece I am proud.

-J

No Recompense or Resolution

Trying out something a bit different, here's my first foray into the big wide world of multi-media!
Forgive the poem's numerous faults (this is mostly a trial run) but I would still love comments!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB_1JK232Pk

The Oracle's Answer (To His Lover's Question)

Cars are dangerous. Bones are relatively fragile. An inherent fear of vehicles is understandable. I was a cautious child.

My mother adjusted to my strangeness early on, but I frightened her. Her attitude was indicative. The world prefers its oracles blind, dumb is even better.

Sometimes probabilities are defied too often.

My first memory was of my own death 20 years later.

You lived in a painting when we met, a whirlwind of color. You laughed when my eyes bulged at your behavior, you are not of this planet. You are your own planet. Your gravity pulled me into the frame.

Your apartment is never bereft of roses. In the way Sally Seton decorated for Clarissa Dalloway, you float the heads of roses in sensual arrangements. I was always jealous of those vases

until we kissed and I learned how to yield like a bowl,

to yield and yield and yield.

When I wake up in your bed, I float to the door in a river of magazine covers. Even the air breathes sparkling with a fashionable character. I know you live for the attention. No cameras, just the flash from my irises in. You’re my favorite celebrity. You glamour me.

Smile now, for me

and for the paparazzi.

Inspire me again with your presence your voice your culture.

I will spin gold from napkins while you prepare dinner.

Escapism has dangerous implications but the world will understand. I’ve never told you how it ends.

Each time you start the car I just squeeze your hand. Because cars are dangerous.

Or rather, people are reckless.

I promise you my touch will keep firing from the nerve endings of your fingers long after the brain has stopped working.

When we die it will be snowing just like Joyce wrote, falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the…

The mourning roses will freeze in their reds. Black contained at the center. They will keep forever,

red forever.

And the water will carry their color through hidden cracks in the frozen ground like blood from a sacrificial altar into hearts still beating.

I can see it.