for lana wachowski
… who am i, and when
wachowski to wachowska
metamorphosized
♥
was there a moment
before i became me? – no,
and yet i wonder…
♥♥
what turns us queerly
recast in a different film
to act against type?
♥♥♥
(type?) (without a face?)
life’s not some single screenplay…
(type?) (without a cast?)
♥♥♥♥
we ask ourselves this
not knowing if an answer
ever was, will be:
♥♥♥♥♥
never yet someone,
neither a nonentity
nor quite nobody
♥♥♥♥
mostly we don’t ask
for fear of wondering, lost
in rapt selflessness
♥♥♥
one eye on the road
which tears our lives inside out
one hand on the wheel
♥♥
and we become one
body, not anybody,
don’t ask who am i…
♥
♥♥
♥
22nd January 2014
note:
i admire lana wachowski’s work a lot and also her general attitude to stuff (as far as one can make out from her few public statements) – she combines humour with intelligence and experimentation – artistic bravery, openminded energy, a sense of inspirational anarchy…
i wrote this poem in one go last night just after i’d been thinking about her life so far.
(it is likely to get edited, tweeted and played with, being in the nature of an experiment, one of my haiku chains…)
I join you in admiration of Lana Wachowski.
This poem is, among other things, about gender typecasting. On a wider level, it is about self-realization.
It has a fine and easy rhythm and in simple, beautiful words, manages to capture the self-doubt, the confusion and the final pride, joy and defiance of self-discovery.
Thank you for sharing this fine haiku chain, Freddie.
thank you for your kind encomium, emmeline!
Oh, this is quite lovely… I part agree and part disagree with the comment above – I don’t think this poem *does* arrive at self-realisation yet arrives instead at a point of understanding *there are no answers* and one’s Self is, and will always be, a mystery even unto one’s Self…
And all that jazz.
But I love the melancholy-yet-not-indulgently-so-tone – which, I do find over the months/years, to be a particular feature of ye pomes d’Omm – and having looked up Ms Wachowski, I think I would like her too.
thank you for your salutiferous sentiments, sandie!
Is there a lovelier thing than a poem?
I think film and poetry should merge!
Lana
thank you for your lovely pentameters, lana!