On #Orlando and #queerlivesmatter
Today is a beautiful day where I am. But I find it ultimately difficult to breathe in moments like this, when violence is waged so close to home. Yesterday I woke up with the news of yet another mass shooting in Orlando, this time, at Pulse, a night club that strives to be a safe space for LGBTQ+ community, on a Latin night with headline on special events for transgendered folks. For a moment I become disoriented, and my heart shrunk. It is not because I am selective about my grievance, it is not because I have not heard of news about other affairs, police brutalities, militarized violence, war-torn countries, transnational conflicts. It is not because I am not hurting for the survivors, or the unemployed mothers and their marginalized children; I am just ultimately in distress because of the horror that shows itself, aggressively escalating to the point abstracted homophobia is manifested into massacre. And media and politicians, being the manufacturers of public consent and opinions, of course cling on to familiar discourses on gun control, Islamophobia, terrorism, mass-shooting, mental illness, all the while trying to ignore the fact that those who didn’t make it out of the catastrophe are specifically targeted because of their racialized, gendered sexual orientations.
You see, violence is always systemic. According to Jeremy Scahill (@jeremyscahill), the shooter works for G4S, one of the largest mercenary firms that engaged in war zones in more than 100 countries. He shot up the club using a legally purchased assault rifle and handgun, bought in the last 12 days (LAtimes). I relied on wikipedia to describe this choice of weapon, and here goes the first paragraph: “An assault rifle is a fully automatic selective-fire rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. Assault rifles were first used during World War II. Though Western nations were slow to accept the assault rifle concept after World War II, by the end of the 20th century they had become the standard weapon in most of the world's armies, replacing battle rifles and sub-machine guns. Examples include the StG 44, AK-47 and the M16 rifle.” The shooter used an AR-15 style. Washington Post (WP) pointed out that “assault style rifles [is] capable of firing many rounds of ammunition in a relatively short period of time, with high accuracy… [T]heir use in these types of shooting is becoming more common: There have been eight high-profile public mass shootings since July of last year… [in which] [a]ssault-style rifles were used in seven of those. In the past 10 years, assault-style rifles have been used in 14 public mass shootings. Half of those shootings have occurred since last June.” In this article, WP also mentined how the ban of rifles from 1994 expired in 2004 and no one bothered to renew it, because statistically rifles weren’t used to kill people nor did the ban have much effect on homicidal rates while it was in effect. Well, until it does.
You see, it is not a coincidence that the militarization and hyperviolence of our everyday lives become the way it is: Farah Godrej points out that the US defense industry of the Cold War after 9/11 became a global provider of security services: militarization becomes a neoliberal service. It means that mass destruction weapons and militarily trained faculties are being deployed in civic issues, the traditional distinction between military and police force, political and civil issues, nation-state and individual, public and private is increasingly blurred, particularly regarding bearing arms. Of this moment in time, we need to look beyond the white feminist rhetoric of only “toxic masculinity,” the psychologicalized excuses of mental illness, the individualized purposes of shooters, and look into a bigger picture that our current history in the making is not afraid to show us: we are living in a dystopian world where particular groups of people are becoming gradually vulnerable under the systemic and sanctioned use of hypertechnologized and militarized weapons. This is not a story about an extremist religious individual who pledged to an extremist state assaulting a group of citizens because of his personal purpose. This is the materialization of recent recurring racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist ideologies that the right wingers preach plus the increase in everyday life militarization. This is not Orlando nor America, this is global. This is not an anomaly, it is an extreme example, but not that much more extreme than the rise of a particular political candidate who freely express hatred as a main political campaign with an enormous following. This is not at all disconnected.
The purpose of this piece is not to intellectualize the tragedy, but to provide a bit of my thoughts. But this is the main part - this is a love poem, for all of those who have fallen and who kept living on. It’s always easy to make arts about life or write a poem a bout one’s personal lost love, it’s always difficult mourning the dead and the damaged. I’m not a poet and my poetry is mediocre at best - there’s that language boundary too. But here goes.
FOR THE LOVERS I HAVE NEVER MET
Dear kind souls,
I have missed you.
I would have been sharing a drink with you,
Laughing with you,
Following your steps on the dance floor
It was a Latin night and you didn’t know but I have been secretly
Watching all the Youtube videos on how to salsa
As your right hand gently touched my lower back
“6,7,8”; your eyes sparkled in awe when you saw I got the basic steps
Come forward, step backward, and spin
I arched my back and loosened my knees,
Fastforwarding along the heightened beats
Our bodies moved as one
Dear kind souls,
I should have met you.
So all I knew about you is not just
an unkind game of putting together the names and the faces
from the police report
Your existence should have entered my consciousness
like the most natural thing on earth:
Our hands touched, our eyes locked, our minds connected
The warmth where our skin pressed against each other
reminded us of why people
sing, dance, write poetry, and engage in conversations
that bring the universe closer to where we sit
I should have fallen in love with you
like the living beings that you are, the totality of
fleshes and souls and minds and your worlds
align with mine in a way
mathematics redefine those definitions of lines, symmetries, angles
We catch each other at the end of the formulas
in which we found ourselves as infinite results of improbable and impossible
Our worlds met as one
Dear kind souls,
I should have been given a chance to
fall in love with you
before our time is up
And you should have waited for me
to come to your world and hold your hands
like we are not meant to walk this earth alone
I should have known you
in a way that did not break my heart
or yours
or your families’, friends’, acquaintances’,
along with so many strangers whom you have never met
yet cried their heart out because
they missed the chance
to get to know you
We should have been friends, lovers,
Or even strangers, I’d settle with that
If it only means your existence weren’t cut short
I wish I would have been given a chance
to know you in a different way
in which a goodbye will only bring heartache
and not permanent
Scars
Dear lovers, brothers, sisters, and friends,
From an existence beyond this lifetime
let us remember you
like lovers, brothers, sisters, and friends
and not numbers of an uncharted tragedy
nor casualties of an uproar society
nor victims of violent hatred
and systemic exclusions
Let me remember you
like the survivors you all are
Your stories will go on
even when somebody tries to put
and end to it.
