By Terrance Hayes
And I understand well now, it is beautiful
to be dumb: my tyrannical inclinations, my love
for the prodigal jocks aging from primetime
to pastime, the pixilated plain people and colored folk
with homemade signs. Cutouts, cutups, ambushes,
bushwackers. The clouds are overwhelmed
and vainglorious. MC Mnemosyne showed up
around midnight like the undetectable dew
weighing the leaves, and I was like Awww shit.
Why ain't I dead yet
like the man who wanted to be buried
with the multi-million dollar Van Gogh he bought?
(Members of The Arts League said No
because there was culture to be made into money.)
The volant statues of the aviary, the jabber-jawed
cable channels and the book in which nothing is written
but the words everyone uses to identify things
that can't be identified. Not that I ain't spent
the last ten years of my life refining my inner cyborg.
Interview questions included how did the DJ break his hands,
who's gone bury the morticians who bury the dead,
And what to do about the sublime and awful music
of grade school marching bands?
Not that Neanderthals have a sense of the existential.
Me and my forty-leventh cousins lolling, and LOL-ing
like chthonic chronic smoke, like high-water suit pants
and extreme quiet. Everybody clap ya hands.
Like fit girls in fitted outfits, misfits who don't cry enough,
who definitely don't sob, but keep showing up sighing.
Everyone loves to identify things that have not been identified.
The rabbit hole, where ever I find it, symbolizes solitude.
So that's exciting. And an argument can be made
on behalf of athletes, rap stars, and various other brothers
who refuse (click here for the entire video)
to wear shirts in public when one considers the beauty
of a black torso. If and when the dashiki is fashionable
again I will sport it with the aplomb of a peacock plume.
For now, I have a row of coin-sized buttons tattooed
down my chest so it looks like I mean business
when I'm naked. I know that means a lot to you.
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We had balmy weather on Wednesday -- temperatures in the 20s! No single digits! Not that I spent much time outdoors anyway; I'm fine in the 30s and quite happy in the 40s, but the 20s are a bit colder than my fingers and toes would prefer. I did some work and some housekeeping -- I actually found and convinced Paul to throw out some Redskins newsletters from the '80s while digging in the box full of old Playbills currently residing in Adam's closet (original Broadway cast Evita, autographed Tune-Arnaz My One and Only, and the one I went hunting for, pre-Broadway engagement of Les Mis).
Because I can't resist a major awards show, even one that's usually mediocre, I put on the People's Choice Awards and was actually pleasantly surprised -- the opening bit with the 2 Broke Girls actresses (whose show I've never seen) and all the other stars was genuinely funny, especially the Sharknado reenactment, and even though I knew Hugh Jackman wasn't going to win because they only present awards to people who are, um, present, I can't really complain if Robert Downey Jr. gets to pick up a trophy. And so nice to see Sarah Michelle Gellar acknowledge support from Buffy fans. From Brookside's Garden of Lights:
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