Patriarchal Company 1:1

Following up from blog entry 1:0, as usual during the creative process, after I writing the poem I tried integrating it with the music of the guitar, and then decided from there that each componant should be working cohesively together as a whole piece. I'm grateful to my cultural theory prof who opened up our classroom space for me to share this experience and perform the piece in its totality for fellow students and the public. The performance was filmed and can be watched here.

If interested, this is the more (however brief) theoretical writing I did for this ongoing project. I'll have to admit that since writing this, I've been heavily leaning into Judith Butler's queer theories which I feel truly harness the essence of mutual accountability, and the writing and unwriting (or as JB says "doing and undoing") of our identity. So... this bit of writing is premature to a larger body of writing that I'm currently working through/exploring. Patriarchal Company.pdf

I realized that my words were something to be embodied

Because only a few words like cash?

With an inflected question mark

Topped by his business gesture of

Propositioned Prostitution

Followed by a stroke to his hardening penis.

Right beside me, in public

To interrupt me

As I was reading my book

Hearing the hollowness of the guitar

The rapping of something trapped

Inside of a shell, a skin

A sound produced to mimic

The desire to hit at my own hollowed chest

For his few words, his gesture

Not knowing how much they took.

Slapping the bone of my thumb

Against the strings

To carry the sound

Of my own heart

And its fear that cannot speak

Loud enough from inside

To replace the words

That have

Tr-tre-mb-trembl-tr-trembl-ed.

Away from my lips

I am not in any skin that I have made

A sculptor’s hands

Yet I cannot rearrange

I cannot rearrange

I cannot rearrange this mirror

Into something that I recognize

All I see

No matter what the order

Is a fragmented object

And it’s as thin as your business card, Mr.

I’m as thin and your business card, Mr.

I’m as thin

As the sinews of veins

That crawl through your foreign hands

As they touch my skin--

I didn’t ask for that.

I didn’t ask for that.

Luckily, this skin is not mine

“Today, I’m not a human,

I’m an object in an artwork”,

and I’ve taken that as the new,

constructed caption of my skinned subject

And I, us, we

Are wearing it

Proud, like a fucking neon sign

Above our heads...

When will we realize that these signs are fabricated.

What language did I speak,

What language did I speak

I’m sure that any language I have learned to speak

did not.

So what spoke

Nothing that was me

But of me

Of us

Of we

And we wear it ignorant

Like a fucking neon sign above our heads

We are more than an objectified object

We are more than a sexualized one

We are more than language

We are the scent of nostalgia

We are the womb of women

That fervently holds

The richness of an untouched earth

folded away,

in a place.

Where y(our) greedy hands

Will never find.

#poetry #bellhooks #juliakristeva #culturaltheory #feministart #louisalthusser #malloryamirault #patriarchalcompany #patriarchy #performanceart #spokenwordpoetry