— Here was born Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick.
On the shores of Battery Park I saw a boat, and the captain was Charon sailing us through the waterways of Acheron — Tess was Virgil — and these were the waters that would lead us through hell. The captain announced the destination:
— Liberty Island!
At that moment, I held my neighbor’s dog tight to my soul, reminding me of my own long lost Scotty Dulcinea — and looking back at the black clouds of Manhattan — the smell of Dulci’s hair, greasy and soothing — I breathed deeply. At my side, I saw Hamlet and Zarathustra — with dead bodies on their backs — and I saw the burial of the 20th century — with all the memories that have flashed through my mind — like black clouds on movie screens.
— How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
I don’t know how is it, but I can tell you they are always pregnant — with milk in their breasts — and they are leaking — those breasts — giving milk to the world — and I suck those milky breasts — that is where my inspiration comes from — from those white breasts — two breasts leaking — two towers falling — and the clouds keep hanging on — hanging on — and I feel the pressure of the hanging, that can hang me from a rope — tie me in knots — drive me into a toil — it is the hanging of expectation — of not knowing when or how — because we know not how it will fall, with fire, with choler, with water, or with death.
We arrived at the Statue of Liberty — only to hear Segismundo blaming us for a crime we never committed:
Ay mísero de mí, Ay infelice
Ya que me tratais así
Que delito cometí
Contra vosotros naciendo
Aunque si nací ya entiendo
Que delito he cometido
Pues el delito mayor del hombre
Es haber nacido
— Start the bucket brigade! There’s a man alive! He’s caught beneath the rubble!
— Keep hope alive! Keep digging. Maybe you’ll find Segismundo in an air pocket where a bird laid an egg.
— We have to destroy the statue to save the man. The man is more important than the symbol.
— Don’t you think we had enough? What more are we going to lose? Our liberty? As far as I know, it could be Osama Bin Laden himself like a horse of Troy with a ploy to destroy another national landmark.
— When those two towers fell — I felt a dentist had pulled out my two front teeth. I could not laugh anymore. And I have the smile of a smiling damned villain. But I also felt the hole in my mouth became a garage, and entering that garage were terrorists in trucks full of explosives and French diplomats — to fuck us more with other nations — to run over our dead bodies.
— Bury the one — bury the other — bury the twins — Muslim and American — Arab and Jew. Don’t be unilateral. See the other’s point of view. You are the whipper, cowboy. You whip and whip and whip — and attack, attack, and attack. Don’t you know how to cover your ass? The attacker is never prepared to cover his ass. And to be fucked up the ass. But you will be fucked up the ass because you have fucked up other nations too many times. Nobody knows you better than the one that you abuse. And I can talk. I know you well.
— You thought legs are not important — but now that liberty has no legs — it can’t walk. And you thought legs mean labor — and you can find cheap labor in Mexico and in China. So you broke Lady Liberty’s legs off — looking for cheap labor — and you found terrorists with explosives.
You went for cheap — forgetting that cheapness is cutting liberty off at the knees. Now we cannot walk. What do you want us to do? Find cheap legs in other countries that will walk for us? We always thought: if you want to walk — it’s because you’re poor. We go by cars and jets. But we forgot that fuel is a luxury and that it would end. Oil is coming to an end — and now we have no legs to walk.
— I thought the brain could rule over the legs. And I thought the brain was white and the legs were yellow or brown. And I thought I could rule with my brain — and even if I cut my legs off — I would find cheap legs in other parts of the world. But now I am a mutilated body. I lost my legs in Korea. I lost my arms in Vietnam. I lost my head in Kuwait. I lost my torso in the World Trade Center.
BURIAL OF THE SARDINE
Giannina Braschi
There at the Fulton Market — where three roads intersect — was the point where Hamlet, Giannina, and Zarathustra first met. The three had been walking the streets like mad — without stopping to rest — until they came to the South Street Seaport — where flies were harrowing around the halo of the fish market that smelled like the rot of Chinatown. They recognized one another and walked towards each other with dead bodies on their backs.
Giannina:
I’m burying the sardine — the dead body I carry on my back.
Zarathustra:
A little fish — in a little coffin. And for this — for this little stinky thing — we came from so far?
Giannina:
Look, it’s moving. It’s still alive.
Zarathustra:
Pica y muerde de fea y de salada que esta.
Giannina:
It worked its whole life in the sludge of oil and vinegar. I’ll sprinkle incense, myrrh, and a pound of gold to be buried with it under the sand.
Hamlet:
Hurry up. The ferry will leave without us.
Giannina:
You have no idea how much I’ve suffered under the influence of this rigorous but retarded sardine. Not a warrior, but a soldier. Making me vow to its regiment of passive-aggressive work. No traveling was allowed. No smoking allowed. No pets allowed. No one could get near me because the sardine would stink — and its stink would bite. Sometimes it would fly around the rim but it would always dive back into the can of sardines — looking for its paycheck. Every two weeks — it brought me a salary — the stinky sardine — and I brought home all I could buy with that salary — confinement, imprisonment. Depending on a salary made me salivate — but it blew my mind to dust — the dust that blows around and makes you cough — but you hardly can see it because it’s made of dust. But I’m not made of dust — I’m made of flesh — and making love to the little sardine drove me crazy. It was such a little fish it barely filled my mouth. I could hardly eat it. I grew hungry — hungry for a big fish. God help me — no more fish! Please no clams, no oysters! Please — nothing shelled or scaled! Nothing salted — nothing finned or fanged! Because it had fangs — the sardine had fangs — and it bit me like a rabid squirrel. It must have known I wanted to bury it. Its fangs were long — and its screams were shrill — and it held grudges — and it had bones to pick. It blamed me for keeping it down — but all I wanted was its liberation from the can. I wanted it to breathe clean air — and to sing. Your mouth is already open — now take a deep breath, little fishy, and sing — sing a song of love. You know my cords are made of vibrant colors. You know I too come from the sea — but I don’t come with grudges in my fangs. I come with wings to fly from your stink. I hate sardines.
Zarathustra:
Then why do you eat them?
Giannina:
Because I detest their helplessness. I wouldn’t eat a lion. It would eat me first. I eat what is weaker than me. I like lamb. I watch a grazing lamb, and my mouth waters. I could eat it alive. But not sardines. They’re already dead. They never lived. They’re dead even when they’re alive. Always with their mouths open. Begging for water. And I don’t mind beggars. But sardines are not beggars — they’re squirmers. They beg for water — but what they really want is to eat you alive — with their deadliness — which is a plague — a virus — bacteria — something contagious that kills you without killing you. They open their mouths to beg for water — but do nothing but gulp the draught and wait for water — with their mouths open — as if snoring which is worse than imploring — they’re beggarly beggars that don’t even beg — they’re too dead to beg — and they’re deadly contagious. It’s their dea
dliness that lingers over me everyday of my life — the dead inertia of the sardine that obeys and begs for water, gallons of water, and does what it’s asked to do in spite of no water and denies itself so much — that it doesn’t realize it doesn’t have a being anymore — and it lets itself be canned — always with its open mouth saying:
— Drop dead but give me drops of water. I don’t want to be buried alive. I want to survive. I’m a salaried sardine. Give me more money.
That’s why they’re so salty and ugly, they itch and bite. Because they’re salivating for salty salaries—salty salaried sardines.
Zarathustra:
It is not a sardine. It is a big fish.
Giannina:
The coffin is small, but the stench is immense. Zarathustra, would you allow my little pet to be buried in the same hole of the hollow tree where you left the tightrope walker?
Hamlet:
And may I please leave the putrefied carrion in the same hollow tree?
Giannina:
We are burying sameness — the aesthetic principle of sameness — the three together — at the same time — holding hands — burying bodies in the same hollow tree — and running free from freedom. Free.
Hamlet:
More myrrh, more gold, more incense — to purify the air. And there is no blood spill.
Giannina:
Not this time. This is the burial — the enclosure of the deed. This dust will purify the air. Hang in there while I finish the rites.
Zarathustra:
I have been hibernating.
Giannina:
I have been stagnating.
Hamlet:
I have been trying to figure out what I should do with Polonius’ body. I might as well do what you did, Zarathustra, leave the body in the hole of a tree — but before I leave it in the hole of a tree — find a hermit to give me two pieces of bread so I can give a piece of bread to the dead.
Zarathustra:
I already left the corpse in the hole of a tree. Now I need to find the overman — somebody who rescues me from the principle of equality:
— All men are created equal.
Maybe that is why they are men because they have equal eyes, ears, and noses — and they have voices that howl to the infinite. But I am looking for inequalities. My thirst is unequal. Satiety is not satiated. And it’s not water I need, but networkers.
Giannina:
So, after all, you are a networker. You work the Internet.
Hamlet:
I am a fishmonger at the market smelling everything that is putrefied. I smell the stench of death — and I have not gotten to my goal.
Zarathustra:
I am still walking the tightrope — trying to get to the other side.
Hamlet:
Do you realize we are posthumous? We are talking after.
Giannina:
Speak for yourself. I’m not. Not yet.
Zarathustra:
But you don’t count — with your broken English — you cut the line — you’re not invited — little fox. You think you are a visionary just for saying: I am going to bury the 20th century. In 1998 you said it — and here we are in 2006 — and you are still trying to bury the body.
Hamlet:
All these bodies are pestering the annals of literature. We have too many unresolved issues.
Giannina:
When I said I will bury the 20th century — everybody — not just me — went looking for a dead body. When Princess Di and Dodi died — people thought — oh, this is the funeral we’ve been waiting for! And when John-John Kennedy died, Americans appropriated the death of Lady Di — and said — this is our American dead prince. But they were inconsequential deaths — deaths that were not the beginnings of a war — nor the end of a century — but accidental incidentals — and their bodies were buried.
Hamlet:
Wait a minute, the death of Polonius was an accidental death, so was the death of the tightrope walker. And Antigona’s brothers were casualties of war.
Giannina:
I am not here to analyze literary texts. You did what you did. I do what I do. What we have in common is our brotherly love — we bury bodies — and we never give birth — although I am in labor most of my life. In labor like Zarathustra. Not like you, Hamlet. You’re a suicide bomber — and a camel with too many grudges. You should have been what you are — a poet — but instead the hunchback took center stage — because you were possessed by your father’s ghost which was the absence of present life in you. You did not live. You remembered. That’s why you didn’t have an objective correlative. What you had were regrets that you didn’t become the poet that you should have been. You should have given up the crown — and followed the path of Yorick — the path of music and love. Your feelings were overwhelming — and they overwhelmed you. Why didn’t you write them down?
Hamlet:
Words, words, words.
Giannina:
What were you reading? That is the question. Instead of writing, loving, living — in the experience that is — not in the regrettable state of what was. I don’t want to fall into the pit of Ground Zero again. Why are we here? Let’s state the facts of our last supper.
Zarathustra:
We are gathered here to break bread with our dead bodies.
Giannina:
I found my dead body in a manhole — two blocks south of the World Trade Center where I was living when the Twin Towers collapsed. Even now, they are finding bones in manholes — and as long as there are bones — I still have lines to write. I like dead bodies and leftovers. I can see clearer when nobody is looking. When everybody goes to sleep — very late at night — I see what I saw when I lived at Ground Zero. I walk like a hunchback with a knapsack on my back.
Zarathustra:
Clear our purposes. Revise our expectations. Set our goals a deadline. Revisit our analysis — explore new consequences — stabilize our instability — take a piss — before we embark on our journey to hear the speeches of Segismundo, the overman.
Giannina:
Not an overman. A prisoner of war, a slave of liberty.
Zarathustra:
The slave is liberty, trapped in the Statue with Segismundo.
Giannina:
Talk to her. Ask for advice.
Zarathustra:
She won’t listen to us. She hates us. She is a feminist.
Giannina:
She will listen to me. She is French.
Statue of Liberty:
What do you want from me?
All Three Together:
Orient us. Are we are on the right track?
Statue:
I am a trophy. They played a game — a tennis match — between the French and Americans at the tournament of liberty — and I became the prize. Do you believe in liberty?
Zarathustra:
As much as I believe in God, in Santa Claus. God is the enemy of philosophy. If God exists, why should I exist? If I exist it is to question the possibility of God. God is always trying to put a stopgap in my brain.
Hamlet:
Ghost is the absence of work.
Zarathustra:
Madness is the absence of work.
Hamlet:
What is madness but the ghost of my father. I didn’t do what I should have been — a poet. The absence of work is madness.
Giannina:
Entertain me a little more while I finish my supper. What have you been doing after death?
Zarathustra:
Sleeping on laurels. Listening to the voice of critics. I can’t stand what they say about me. I could never stand myself. That is why I had to disappear après my time. I could have waited longer. But I lost patience. And faith. No, faith I never had. But patience I lost. Being alone is not easy. Always alone — without even a platonic dialogue. Despotricando — and preaching — always having to say something wiser than what another just said — using his argument to upset my own — to displace my argument
— to take it out of context. And once my argument was taken out of context, I would always find a parking lot in that empty space where I would park my car. And give my speech — from the highest point of view. Even though blind — I could see the bridge over the cliff — and the abyss between the bridge and the cliff — and my eyes would shine more astounded than ever — looking over the ridge — at the abyss — and the cliff. Poets don’t mean what they say. They take no responsibility — no accountability — they have light feet — they run like rabbits after carrots — intuitions — and leave the tortoise behind — with jetlag — and myopia and eyeglasses — studying studiously the flight of the rabbit.
Giannina:
I have a lucky rabbit’s foot and tortoise shell glasses.
Hamlet:
I have crab legs. If like a crab I could walk backwards — and resurrect the body of my ghost — and as a crab — walk backwards — behind the tortoise crawling behind the rabbit eating carrots.
Giannina:
What are carrots but flashlights of intuitions?
Hamlet:
And what are flashlights but the spotlights of ghosts.
Giannina:
I prefer track lights. They put me on track.
Statue of Liberty:
I have inspired empires. I have destroyed empires.
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