Thursday, November 25, 2010

Vanity Fair

*So my palm-tickler stoped by while I was tweaking this piece. In my limited Malagasy I told him it was about men and women. I found it ironic - maybe he thought the poem was about him - and partially it is. The angry part of the quiz for comic relief.
*He is not allowed to visit me at my house anymore by the way. I'm pretty sure that whenever I went to the market and his friends saw me, they would go tell him and then he would end up visiting. Not cool. So I finally went and told the people at the commune office and they went to him with the commune police saying he couldn't come around anymore.




I always wondered what I'd look like with a shaved head
It seems so easy
No dealing with curling irons or straighteners
Shower time cut in half
All I'd need are some clippers

What do you think y'all?

Could I pull off the G.I. Jane Demi Moore look?
Or maybe Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta?
Could I be the
No-I-don't-have-hair bad-ass
Dying in a blaze of gunfire
But only after I have seduced you in ways that you've only imagined
Could I be a type of sexy like that?

Nope
No, I'm too scared
'Cause what if my head is a wonky shape
Or it never grows back the same length
Or what if people think I'm sick
That cancer is my hairdresser
And the only beauty they see in me
Is because they think I know more about life than they do

Why give up my hair
My one vanity
My beauty like that?

And besides
I'm afraid it wouldn't make a difference
I'm afraid I'd still be beautiful
Still have to ignore cat calls
And learn to speak rejection
Like I learned that
Below here, you're a prude
But above here, you're a slut

Call me shallow
Call me a bitch too obsessed with looks
Tell me beauty is only skin deep
And what matters is inside
Tell me of course I don't believe in plastic surgery
Because I'm already beautiful
That I do not know what it feels like
To break mirrors
That repeat time and time again
That this world is not fair

Call me vain
Call me anything but pretty
Tell me anything but beauty
Becuase beauty is cat calls and rejection
It's learning to yell fire
Becasue no one responds to
No, Help or
"Stop!"

It's skipping meals to go to the gym
A guilty binge with a painful purge
And still two inches away from looking like her
Jealousy and competition
Tainting bonds of friendship
Of sisterhood

It's unearned privileges
And the constant struggle
To prove you have a brain
It's swallowing pride
Facing the reality
That you are one of the lucky ones

One of the lucky ones
That only gets gropped and grabbed
Only belonging to lustful thoughts
And unwanted stares
One asking each and every day
How can I trust you or any of your brothers?

I wish I were plain
I wish years of this shit
Hadn't made me this way

I'd donate my vanity
To the Locks of Love
My smooth skin
To the puberty impared
And to the woman buying anit-wrinkle cream
In Walgreens
As for the cross-dressing man
Awaiting surgery
Every curve would go to her

I'd give away all these things
People told me were beautiful
If it would allow me even a moment's rest...

But I'm afraid it wouldn't make a difference

Evolution haiku

I wait for the day

When my poems are about change

Instead of myself

If mechanics wrote love haikus

I only crash cars
That belong to my close friends
My record is clean

First car: age sixteen
Silver Honda Accord
It was a death trap

I learned to shift gears
By the feel of it: Listen,
Now let out the clutch

Then, from grey to blue
Angst became my fuel
Shifting with every impulse

Red, fast and wild
A Toyota Celica
Perfectly fitting

Too eager, too young
Overheated and broken
I'm no mechanic

Then I saw, I saw..
A Chilean stallion
A fable creature

You, my Elanore
Shilby GT 500
Unattainable

We had a nice ride
Cruising, Blasting rhythms of
"I love you so much"

It's hard to describe
Shifting into happiness,
Into your great light

You, fable creature
You have an amazing light
Of course you must share

I will wait for you
There are those who need your light
You must go to them


And you went to them.
I can only wait for so long
Before I must shift


It was a hard choice
Either I abandoned you
Or gave up my dreams

My dreams of travel
To find a me beyond men
To take time to walk


Desperate, I waited...
But to walk, one cannot wait.
It was a hard choice.


Unknown direction
Taking in my surroundings
Aimlessly, I walk

A poor man's Lexus
There, rusting in the hot sun
Awaiting new paint

Rano - Rano - Rano Madio

Thursday Nov. 4th, 2010

I had the honor of attending the opening of 5 new water pumps in my commune. The organization Grand Lyon funded the construction of 5 new pumps located in 4 different fokontany.

We went to each fokontany where people were gathered around the new pumps. They all had a sky blue fence around them with empty buckets lined up outside of it - waiting to be filled. Most of the time was spent, as is the Malagasy culture, of introducing everyone who is present and thanking each other. There were a lot of speeches in Malagasy and in French (the Grand Lyon people all spoke French and no Gasy which is typical and the reason people are confused when I don't understand French). Thus I was picking out Malagasy words here and there that I understood, leaving me partially confused, and then totally lost the rest of the time people were using French.

After the speeches the pumps were opened, turned on and the Grand Lyon people, the commune Mayor and the fokontany mayor washed their hands and took a quick drink of the water. Then the village people came in to fill their buckets. At the first pump, the kids from the primary school sang a song while the buckets were being filled. Mostly I caught the word for pump and "Rano - rano - rano madio" which means water - water - water clean. I totally teared up listening to them sing and pulled the "oh, there is something in my eye" eye wipe technique to cover up how big of a sap I am!

The second fokontany did not do anything particularly special for us but as the mayor walked to the pump someone said "what's new?" and he replied not much but "misotro rano Antotohazo" which means drinking Antotohazo (the fokontany) water. He was super happy about it. Then we were clapped into the third fokontany as the kids chanted "Merci". This pump was at the primary school where they had different Eau'Vive bottles filled with dirty water and clean water from the pump. In between the speeches and the hand washing deal there were 6 girls who recited poems they had written about water/the new pump.

By the time we got to the last pump, in the commune, everyone was tired and hungry so there was less enthusiasm... But the commune thanked all the people involved with bringing in the new pumps with hand woven baskets with "Grand Lyon" and the commune's name woven into each side. Accompanied with a box of tea of course!

Good times!