Love Your People Hard

As I began to write this, it was Frank O'Hara's birthday. If writing by any single person has influenced the way I live my life, it is words written by Frank O'Hara. The way he merges sincerity and intellect and humor and just goddamned beautiful language stops me in my tracks everytime. Somedays I can be obsessed with a single O'Hara poem or line from the moment I wake up till I dream of him and him sitting in front of me reading one of his lesser known gems. In the dreams I always want to lean over and kiss him on his receding hairline, tell him I like his nose, and stare into his vague blues...

I made dinner for my family tonight; a very simple spaghetti with a bacon, ground beef, garlic, and marinara-from-a-jar sauce, and texas toast. My brother and sister-in-law left early. She's a few months pregnant and had some strange pains and started spotting. She came out of the bathroom balling. Saying it didn't feel right...

Today was also the second day of hearings on marriage equality. Something I'm sure Frank would support, but I can also imagine his support as a casual affair. He wouldn't give two fucks what the SCOTUS thought about marriage. He would keep having fabulous love affairs with dancers and artists. As Marjorie Perloff quotes John Ashbery:

O’Hara’s poetry has no project and therefore cannot be joined. It does not advocate sex and dope as a panacea for the ills of modern society; it does not speak out against the war in Vietnam or in favour of civil rights; it does not paint Gothic vignettes of the post-atomic age; in a word it does not attack the establishment, it merely ignores its right to exist…

In that moment, seeing my sister cry for the first time since I've met her, I felt nothing but grief. In that moment, I was actually so glad that I didn't have anything like this to lose. In that moment, I seriously questioned my desire for love...

I have this tattoo on my arm that's a quote from Meditations in an Emergency:

All I want is boundless love.

And it's true, even after seeing the pain and fear in my sister's eyes, that's still all I want. I want to be so loved that it would destroy the other person to see me gone. And the opposite: I want to have something to lose, something that if lost, would destroy me. That might be the only thing I don't have in my life right now, and I don't think that's a difficult request...

I think that's what gets me about marriage equality. That kind of love isn't unique; that kind of love is universal. Everyone wants to be loved and have love like that...

We all wanna be fucked up by love...

My friend Lisa said something pretty great on facebook in regards to marriage equality: "I don't think anyone should have to make a pathos appeal to support LBTQ marriage... (because) you can bet everything that the US Government doesn't give a fuck about love," and I think that's true. So what if SCOTUS shoots down DOMA and prop 8, that not's going to keep you from loving your people. And that's what you have to do, love your people as hard as you can no matter what, cause your government doesn't give a fuck about your love...

I think the best way to end this post is with a bible verse (yeah, it's gonna fuckin happen):

Galatians 5:22-23; But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

*(UPDATE: my sister and my future nephew/niece are ok:)