Why do I think of Michael....
He came to my fiction class
as a man (dressed in men's
clothes) : then he came
...
'There are two ways to go to the gas chamber,
free or not free.' Jean-Paul Sarte
Soft Chaos
...
Indian Market, Santa Fe,
early morning rain, still
damp, all the tribes
gather, clouds gather,
...
Grew up in the Mission, San Francisco, and raised by my Yaqui Indian grandmother, Jesus Villanueva, a curandera/healer/dreamer. Mother of four grown children...I woke at 4am to write when they were home. Coffee, candles, small lamp, flute music...the only human being awake in the universe writing/alive, that silence. I've lived in many beautiful places- on a farm where my first real poetry was written/published, growing every vegetable known to humankind. Chickens for eggs/meat, pigs, steer for steaks. In the Sierras where I first HEARD the Sun rise, that great hum. By la mar for many years, where my youngest son learned to surf in the full moon's light. Now I live in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, returning to teach at Antioch University, Los Angeles- and visit la familia, my friends.)
Crazy Courage
Why do I think of Michael....
He came to my fiction class
as a man (dressed in men's
clothes) : then he came
to my poetry class
as a woman (dressed in women's
clothes, but he was still
a man under the clothes) .
Was I moved in the face of
such courage (man/woman
woman/man) ....
Was I moved by the gentleness
of his masculinity; the strength
of his femininity....
His presence at the class poetry
reading, dressed in a miniskirt,
high boots, bright purple tights,
a scooped-neck blouse, carrying
a single, living, red rose, in a
vase, to the podium (the visitors
not from the class, shocked-
the young, seen-it-all MTV crowd-
into silence as he's introduced,
'Michael....') And what it was, I think,
was his perfect dignity, the offering
of his living, red rose to the perceptive,
to the blind, to the amused, to the impressed,
to those who would kill him, and
to those who would love him.
And of course I remember the surprise
of his foamy breasts as we hugged
goodbye, his face blossomed
open, set apart, the pain of it,
the joy of it (the crazy courage
to be whole, as a rose is
whole, as a child is
whole before they're
punished for including
everything in their
innocence.)
To Michael B.