Artist's Statement- attempt 1

Initially, my thought was to compose an essay explaining my poetry in the most concrete of terms in an attempt to draw upon the logical mind of the audience.  Poetry can be logical, mathematical, scientific; if I want I can write a fourteen line ababcdcdefefgg sonnet in iambic pentameter.  I can write something so beautifully precise in meaning, a tribute to the mental process of solving for x, pristine and leaving nothing up to interpretation.

Then later, I can sneak back in, break into the CEO-esque mansion of a wordwork with a ski mask over my hair, wearing all black and feeling like a ninja, though I hear ninjas really wore blue.  I can spray paint harsh words over the perfect white walls, "cock," "motherfucker," "whore."  I can break all of the fine china and use the pieces to tear the curtains.

Sometimes, it can be fun.  What isn't interesting about limiting yourself so severely only to break free, pumping your fist to the skies and screaming "liberty!"?

Often, there is no time for rules.  I don't need to be the Übermensch to feel iconoclastical.  I must have pen and now or the words will burst out of me like a non-verbal Tourrete's, fingers scraping the verses into the walls.  Words divined in a purposeful order; subjectivity is dead.  How can I take credit for something I did not create but that has been created through me?  It is a wonderful way to be objectified, not by men but an ineffable something we so lovingly refer to as inspiration.  Oh, for a muse of fire!

Experimentation is nice, so juicy and sensuous.  To wake up at 3:15 a.m. for an entire month, pouring one's sleep thoughts onto a smeared page in an unreadable print.  Waking up with the tell-tale blue or black or gray or purple poet's pinky.  Such a happy insomnia.  Then to compose lists of words and phrases from the touching creations of others, "puedo escribir los versos mas tristes esta noche," "it is not your pen you are looking for," "you soothed me like cake and milk."  Your pen can sooth me with the saddest lines.  Tonight, you are looking for cake and milk.

Often, I want to get a point across, want to make my words rile the masses into a 100,000+ anti-war rally.  Let's march on Washington because I'm queer, Latina, in chronic pain, and I am mad as hell!  So many things I am so pleasantly uncomfortable describing with poetry; let me describe for you the importance of the purple pen I stole from a college recruiting event, it makes such pretty lines.  But to incite, yes, that is where I am.  My purpose as creator or medium for creation.  Let me create empathy.  Who will love this poor brown girl, I want to ask.  I will ask.  I am asking.

Wikipedia tells me that my artist's statement must explain, justify, and contextualize my body of work.  My work is an extension of my body, and isn't work at all, but a serious play.  Explaining myself seems like something a naughty child ought do, justification feels like something for which to strive-- I will one day justify myself on this earth and then I will die, and my context is as fluid as this earth and my body - "I was about to slip down the sink like grease."  Multiple subjectivities, striving, oozing.

I am a malleable poet/ess playing with canon and neologisms, dreaming of successfully lulling the "I" to sleep, one day.  What further peace of spirit can be desired?