Boredom Without Borders

It tickles me, I think colloquially, 

how much some do presume to know. 

As if by capturing water in ice 

one can presume to learn its flow. 

I, for one, aim to approach the worlds 

with breaths delicate enough to stir 

the ink, not scatter it. Not banking 

on a step, a wind, a blow 

I am randomly inspired to write an educational post about my reading today. Why? I don't know! Do I need a reason? I thought this was 'Murica!

This is E Pauline Johnson Tekahionwake (1861-1913), who I just found out is on the Canadian $10.00 bill. She's a brilliant poet who also happens to be something of a Canadian Pocahontas. Why, you might not ask? Well sure thing, I will tell you because you also might ask. Tekahionwake is the daughter of a Mohawk chief who made a living performing her poetry for predominantly wealthy white draw-room audiences from Quebec to Vancouver. Her phenomenon reached all the way to London and the Queen herself, who were tickled by a 'rush of red.' Like Pocahontas, to the superficial eye she took on the mantle of 'token Indian royalty' and embraced British-Canadian culture to the point of dreaming of retirement in the British countryside. She is also a very complicated human whose life and legacy has been, in many respects, Disneyfied.

As when one starts to dig through Pocahantas' history, unexplored trials, triumphs and thorns are rife. Tekahionwake, along with writing ethereally sticky verse, was among the only poets of the time in North America- male or female- with the cajones to perform her own writing. Again, this is the 1800's, she's a woman, and she's part Mohawk. E.J.T. was raised in the shadow of a decidedly misogynistic Victorian-Canadian culture as well as a Mohawk culture which didn't encourage female expression and became a travelling poet. Regardless of subtext, that's pretty incredible.

Most travelling performers of the time stuck with the good ol' golds of Shakespeare and Ibson, which, while timeless, were heard a thousand times before by Victorian drawroom audiences (who, which face it, often didn't have much else to do). Tekahionwake performed her own work. She performed half in the regalia of her tribe and half as a member of the British landed gentry, a summation of the dual ideal personae suffusing her life of poetry and exile. She was immensely, explosively talented and, in my opinion, constricted by traditional English forms and the need to make a living performing. She might as well have been wearing a corset of verse.

But her life was no grand coterie- Tekahionwake's great love of travel and meager funds meant she often slept in trains on the way to gigs. She lived hand to mouth and the rigors of her life were often brought forth as explanations of her early death. Despite the claps and grand applause, Tekahionwake had reason to believe that, like less illustrious Mohawks, not only was her history being erased and exploited, she wasn't even making any money out of it!

In fact, much of the prose Tekahionwake wrote in her 'later' life, before she succumbed to breast cancer at age 53, dwelled on a white world which turned wholly (and disingenuously) accepting after displaying mostly spite and cruelty. On other fronts, what was put forth as kindness is revealed to be the ultimate assimilatory cruelty- raising someone as one of your own to the point at which they, at great personal cost, renounce their own heritage, homeland and past, only to be flicked away like last year's shank bone.

Tekahionwake's short story As It Was In The Beginning is a Disney movie which... takes a bit of a turn. Esther, a Mohawk girl taken from her father and mother to a missionary boarding school, is doted on and darling'd, only to be cast out for daring to fall in love with Lawrence, the son of the cassock-frocked man who silk-robed her away. Lawrence immediately (and somewhat simplistically/unrealistically- more indicative of Esther's impression than his actual reaction) renounces his love and agrees with his father- a true anti-Disney twist. The story abruptly ends with the Esther poisoning the boy who abandoned her with an arrowhead left by her mother and slinking off into the night, effectively becoming the "snake" Lawrence's father called her when forbidding their union.

If I read more I may be able to trace E. Pauline's (Intentional? Unintentional?) satirization of the British/Canadian assimilation narrative. This satirization could potentially come into fruition in The Shagganappi, a novella Tekahionwake worked on close to her death. I say "could" because it's not entirely clear this is a satire (although I think to say it isn't a satire might be insulting to T.'s intellect, it may also be consistent with the biopsychosocial profile I sense emanating from her- though this could be a lost path if it is simply, as I also suspect more than likely, a parable built, like a Noah's Ark, for a new generation).

In The Shagganappi, a boy recognized by the governor of the province at his small state school is given the courage to become the first Indian to join an elite boarding school. It is a parable in which many reject "Shag," but ultimately embrace him due to his undeniable merits and heroic acts. Once again the acceptance is hurried, unexplored, and has a wistful air to it.

The overlapping threads with other examples of 'cultural assimilation with the determination to excel and become the best possible example of the culture trying to exterminate or whitewash mine in order to negotiate a place for my own culture within it- or carve one'- are ones I hope to further explore. Ie. several African American stalwarts such as Booker T Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Richard Wright, among soooooo(o) many others. Obviously each example is singular and merits far more thought.

To add some more obviously American immigration examples of this phenomenon, the guy at the Halal cart and behind the Bodega counter. Also, Alexander Hamilton.

This anxiety- the need to escape through a gap-

tooth in the mouth of space-time. 

Missing tooth mayhem dividing by zero

while small talk mosquitoes around. 

Call it by it’s name: The Ultimate Form

of avoidance. The need to disappear into

another’s skin for awhile, to groom a roof

out of equations. E=MC Fuckall will be squaring

off a floor near you. The inanimate veils of wallpaper

are draped over a second’s grave. 

I know that look of yours which makes me twitch,

the same old song and same old itch and same old rain

dance sure, I can conjecture based on a thousand corny movies 

and an adolescent crush, but fortunately for all involved this time

its pure instinct when I run my hand over your lines of struggle,

really awe when I talk of your strength and the too-smooth

slide over your weary.

  I want to be the reverse bridge yoga pose 

over your stream, the dummy for your dance.

Done with coy and mellow muse, I want

you to sweep me like a cleaner who can clock out

hours early if she’s done. It never stops amazing me, 

the quilts of stars those brick and mortar atoms can enact,

finite infinitude of dickish capitulations, waves crashing

and echoing stronger, the world somehow still flowing

when a dam breaks and all that’s left is to hide like rats

at the end of the Pleistocene, to laugh at the outsize Finger

 like ants at an IMAX. Through hiding we can look inside and make-

 believe.

 Your skin slow erosion of riverbanks streaming fuzzy beams like licks 

on the deep gleaming brown of your long legs and your dreads running

intensely through your goofy smile your shatter of my dumb ass pretense

 leaps and ducks through all the other tributaries,

 stamping outsized portraits like overplayed jump scares,

the arches of our oceanfuls of waves riding and spraying 

so much of the sea and so little, the whole world not giving a fuck

about handing the stage to us, they’re done already and it’s ours for

Dear purple, the language and light of my love, of the sonorous

hymns from above- release me into your beauty now.

Even the raged birds can sing, even summer can wring for its dinner.

For so long the piazza lights have been set to a glimmer,

the glow of the Earth singing from green to blue to jet-black iris.

Enough water lilies. Enough tranquility. There’s no such thing

as immortality, or a sun standing up on its own without leading

the moon. When we look into the water or the sky as birds

or beasts, as flies or moths who cannibalize the inborn teats

of unformed memory, let there be light upon our future

yesteryears, and let that light lead the way into darkness.

No more Cordelia- no more hammerhead harping from heart’s

moated Mordor- no more vanishing art. I look upon the ships

leading the horizon, their dappled wear, their tricked out masts,

the ocean’s vanished coins reflecting the fares of their maps,

and my tongue, my little vestiment of air, begins

to row

I.

I’m browsing through a trauma forum when I should be asleep because

this is the path of least dramatic resistance, and so the most dramatic

 fork to take. It’s so easy to eat an explosion. Much harder to-

There are whole threads devoted to journals of women

 whose fathers…

 I’m browsing through a trauma forum

when I should have been cleaning my room

 or at least meditating.

 If I imagine my voice is a truckload of baby deer clown-catapulted

into a Somalian war zone, that might help me unwind a bit.  

 II.

 I’m so afraid of my own face I can’t

look in the mirror without mourning one thing or the other,

 the fact that I didn’t shave this morning and went to work that way,

or the unbird-dusted, soot-sunk hollows of eyes I imagine I’ll see

 in the doe-eyed face most patients find endearing

and which prompts spontaneous greetings of “buddy.”

 III.

 Older and Fatter:

The fact of my own voice is somehow so frightening

that I cannot recite a poem of my own despite reaching

higher than a mountain’s thinning scalp

(a windbreakered reference to my head)

to pat a patient’s head over a roach on a half-eaten pizza.

 IV.

 I guess what I’m trying to say, other than that you can speak up

in class and, 99% of the time, not look like you have that zit on your nose,

 or are ‘that idiot,’ or have been living in a radioactive cloud which rears

it’s mud-face whenever you open your mouth, is that

 99% of the time, you’re avoiding doing the laundry.

 I’m browsing through a trauma forum when I should be going

to sleep, because there are so many right turns to take,

 and so many corners to leave to the dark.  

My brain just seems to steer into the path

 Of flagellating pyrotechnics, among the most socially accepted forms of numbing

 alongside alcohol, T.V, and casual sex,

{un}like the comedian from the show tonight

 who my family called me in to watch because his show was about

depression, and was naked in endearingly ugly ways,

 like casual sex rehearsed in a darkroom several times,

and half the time my mom was watching me.

 V.

  99% of the time the person next to you is wondering if you’ll notice

there’s a zit on their cheek, or the muffin they ate that afternoon,

 or the wear of their grandfather’s death

around the muscles of their mouth,

 and half of the time the teacher is cracking a casual joke about how old he is

in the skillet to digest and conjure, in slightly different forms, in each successive class

 as he wonders why he still goes through the motions, or the motions go through him.

It smooths the riverbed sometimes. I forgot what I was going to say,

 which you can guarantee will happen in this story several times,

on which you’ll be presented with a lot of awkward whiteface.  

 It’s funny to me, looking back on the marl of these words, the extent

To which emotion creates supernovas, meteors mashing as meaning

The people of the real world take up

time enough. 

I want to feel something inside and not

move out. 

Craft, craft craft, infused with romance-

it has to be.

Basic. Necessary. Unlabeled,

 Unbabelling pride. 

It has to be-

Impossible.

The looms in the Queen’s chambers

We threw ourselves

into pretzels,

cleaned the desk

after each offer-

minds in the washer,

 a glance to the dryer.

She stole my eyes

And tugged at all the weeds-

the plot watered itself every day.

First I’m the Paladin

 and then the troll,

my agency clenched like a flag.

I became a reluctant director,

all interests at play-

She was the fool,

 then we reversed the clot.

That’s what happens

In the last act of an opera-

His reservoir runs out

and her moon rains.

 She stands over,

punches a hole in his face

and walks through the tattered wallpaper.

I see that face in my reflection

many mornings.  

At the gym, a continuous rowing of muscle

is what she gave me- an old, tattered jump-rope,

she watched as I went up to 100-200-300-400

all while she cocked her squats, wondering

at the endless reserves of the 14-year-old body, the way

for an elusive moment, he could perch between the teacups

and the twister, cycling into an unmasked sky with still

invisible margins- still carving out the kingdom of his body

jump by jump, bones bridging the pebbles in the pond for his

rotations, muscle and sinew giving them perch, halved and doubled

in jerks forward and back which measured each paring

of the motor and its next drawn breath, the impenetrable

roundness of the jump rope keeping pace. An ascent and a slicing

past life- Her body was a tribe of granite,

each muscle carved delectably as a David shimmering with minnows,

now having me think of the demigod Maui and his moving tattoos.

I remember her tight springs of curls drawing me in-

She laid her arms upon my shoulder, said, ‘it’s ok- you don’t need to leave

after five. You’re like me.’ And as I write I remember that desire

to leave my body and vanish into some interdependent mist,

drawing from each other a bracelet of water, inhabiting wholly,

eyes clasped in blind faith on the wall past the treadmill,

watching everything evaporate until all that remained were the caves

from which my eyes watched and, odd seasons, caught

What we first heard were these great shouts

as though tigers burst from wands were exchanging

batons. There were winds erupting from scalps

which would burst like mache, paper tumbling down

in the tup-tup-tupping of stairs. We watched

the rankle of chase from below, black arm

unfolding blithely into swan’s necks tipped with

crackling orbs. Form popped feathers and flew

to re-emerge in flame-looped frames

waved out by exotic purveyors of goods

who dragged leggings away from planetary dumpsters.

The hunger of life has no object- it wriggles, it writhes,

it turns over, it digs out of a soiled land in search of

soiled land. I want to drift along Tchaichovsky’s

tight-capped waves and give way to their glorious sink.

This is how the body sings: when it slips from its

clothes and wears nothing but the silence coursing

out and revealing its heft, stretching vessels

until they burst their buds or die. Life after

every second is a second chance. Music of the moment

stretch my vessels, strum their grooves until the rib

cage cords with longing. I want to take you in my

teeth and bite your bridle, silo your sully and snap

into sparks. I forgot, we are alive- and we

will stumble into that hole chiseled

just for the innocent, huddle by banks to let

our tongues probe at the star-chucked dew lapping

itself, dripping from leaf into lake, drowned

Your many thousand fingers drip down my windowpane

And your nostrils flare, your hairs become tangled

In the streets, may your voice be stern and unforgiving

of the walls between us etch-a-sketched and scissored

into being, may you be a mirror or mirage in which

I dip one hand and huddle the other under my coat-

For what purpose, I’m not quite sure, though the feeling

I get when a train thunders while I’m inside and I feel

nothing gives me hints, though the beavers who fell

to form homes make me think, though the cold mold

of the soil into faces makes me wince, as if the death

of thousands and rape of millions could ever mean

anything, but life goes on, that bottle rocket lending

me G-Force of FOMO, which sets me on the road

and shoves me up again, there is always a face

veiling the horizon with purple tulips and turning

away, as if it will ever be ok to contemplate the unwinding

of the spool of birth, to look upon the tangled world

Let me flow straight through the spearhands

of nails, let me swell into rivers and succor

the flow, let me become a vast and white-nosed

deer and nudge snow onto the banks of every

seam, let me sing from the sandpaper tongues

of the dead, let me swell into the mass of the

unthinkable until a face is formed, let the canyon

of my heart expand and take as many with me