View A Commentary (Rant)

mel's rant
		14-Feb-05   Love and Politics About a year and a half ago, I wrote a poem called "Very Serious Poets" in which I asserted that "Very Serious Poets/do not write love poems." It's amazing how time changes everything. At that time, I felt like love and politics were two separate entities. I didn't want my work to be written off as "too emotional" or "feminine", identifications that would invalidate my work in a white male-supremacist culture. I wanted instead to add to the discourse, to the dialogue, about race and racism, sex and sexism, class and classism, queers and homo/transphobia. I didn't know I could do both at the same time. I realize now that I was misguided. Those of us who live in these United States cannot exist outside these binaries, these polarized opposites, that cannot thrive without our silent agreements. We cannot love without being a part of a politicized group of lovers -- whether we are getting married with public approval, or are erased from history and even public bathrooms because we don't fit a gender category. Or maybe we fall somewhere in between. We cannot love without being racialized -- whether we deal with cops harrassing us for driving down the street with our partners, or are smiled and warmly greeted when we walk into a restaurant. Or maybe our partnerships provoke both responses -- depending on who appears to be in control at the moment. We cannot love without constant reminders of our class background and current economic status. Do worries about making the rent lead us to stay in relationships we might otherwise leave? If we are blessed with financial abundance, will we love in excess, and thus, create addictions and other worldly distractions because material stability just isn't enough? Or won't we? Love then is not possible without political strings. Our lives are political because we exist in the United States of America. This country hands us that historical baggage everyday. We either choose to work towards eradicating these arbitrary boundaries that were drawn long before we were born, or we don't. Our complicity lies in our silence, and "if poets are truth-tellers and/poems are reality-records" then it becomes my responsiblity as an artist to engage in the conversation. Forgive me for the years of complicity. Today, on this Valentine's Day Eve, I begin to Read. Speak. Resist.