Hollywood, I’m sick of being taught how to cope with loneliness.
The long, ‘artistic,’ shadow-filled shots of men in suits with one bead of sweat sliding down their faces.
The pulls of non-descript alcohol, the women as dolls, the freeways.
I’m over solemnity
Resignation
Tired of learning a gun’s ice unless the hand wraps it, one finger at a time, as the only last choice. Or the first choice out of a long built last habit.
Strange how little they show them eating. The most familiar of lonely tasks. Maybe because it escapes resignation entirely. It is necessary. Too unsettling of a mirror.
If I could dine with a hundred lonely superheroes, I would ask them:
Does anyone want to know:
How many people can you be in love with at once?
Is it like asking, how many pairs of favorite shoes can you have, or how many earrings?
Every gorgeous person knows, the best aren’t numbered, they’re just all that. The best.
I collect loves like rhythms, or drum solos.
by the time I die I might have a thousand soul mates.
my heart is one of those mushroom parachutes from gym class. The more people inside the better it stays open.
Loves: My gender?
It has room for all of you.
Your gender? It makes me.
Love: what I need?
All of you.
What you need? It makes me.
This is why I trust you.
You know your way around this cliff
Chips on shoulders and safety harnesses are for novices
You’ve got dynamite strapped (though you never need it)
and knives in boots
leather in all the right places
you make sexy underwear sexier
your body takes on granite and wins, every time,
naked
or heeled
When you speak it’s cuz you’ve earned it and cuz you owe it to us
You’ve laced lightening through teeth
Packed loaves and fishes lunches, enough for ages of people, enough for years of days
At the top of this catastrophe, at the top of the slippage, the plunging, the shrieking and the diving, the horrified facing of it all,
You pass out feathers
Daily
Tirelessly
Catching them in the wind and giving them away one or three at a time
Daring us to make it out of this alive
If I could dine with a hundred superheroes, I would ask them,
Do you know how many people this lover of mine can be at once?
Lately just for me they were family and nurse and sweetheart and therapist and badass high femme magician, all in minutes, for days and 6 weeks in intensive care and rehab and 4 more weeks on the phone.
They were poop fingernail scraper and diaper rash alerter and constipation-fighting – hand holder in the bathroom and XXX XXX XXX.
Now they’re chef three times a day and the type of a therapist to whom I owe hella money and they dress this body my brain injury couldn’t forget and can’t stop being overwhelmed by
and they dress my body expecting that the left side of my brain can learn how to move my right foot right as long as I’m booty shaking for them
and they carry more shit up and down stairs including me than should ever be allowed without a fixed meal in return
and they laugh and smile like they’re proud of me whether or not I can find a way to feel proud,
and I hope their faith in my mad need to take care of my people and my mad need for brilliance that sheds patriarchy like theirs does will let them be some more people in love with me
till I can properly cook them feasts and pole dance at all kinds of parties for them.
Cuz superheroes,
this lover is who you would be if Hollywood wanted to get through the world’s end;
in 2012, this lover thought FUCK THAT to the doctors who had predicted my death and this lover hooked me into the sun that’s always rising for them
and we’re long over coping with loneliness,
we’re working for all of ya’ll
so we can all be together
as is right.
We’re the best earrings and heels,
yo,
we’re the best.
Will you be my valentine?
Will you be our valentines? We need some love, ya’ll.
Feb 14, 2013 (with an afore-written insert 😉
Kris Gebhard, PhD 