Giannina Braschi - United States of Banana

Ábreme la puerta

Ábreme la puerta

Que estoy en la calle

Y dirá la gente

Que esto es un desaire

And el desaire was gone with the wind — what was gone with the wind was my hat. I am not a parishioner of your church. I am not an addict — nor a fanatic — I am a poet of love. And why do you need my poems of love? When you make love to Protagoras, to Aristophanes, to Parmenides, to Zeno — you ask me to write the happening — but I am not allowed in — just to peek through a window — without touching any of the bodies — as a premonition of happiness — a glimpse of what could happen — if you let me love all these sages of humanity.

Diotima: All these yawners with a predisposition for philosophy with their sneezes and hiccups and headaches — who don’t act on impulses — who refrain from their desires — who find themselves in a dilemma — without a beginning and an end — I am here to heal them — by sleeping with them — they become healthy in a second — they stop thinking. Their thoughts are their eternal dilemmas — what gives them headaches — and keeps them from making love to each other and to me. See what happens — when the doors of the Republic are opened to poets, philosophers, and lovers — orgies of love — and magic spells spill champagne and baby teeth start growing trees inside gums — and people laugh to high heaven — and they drink — and forget — what is mindless — the mindless mind of the mindless world — what goes around — and never returns when you want it to come to you fast — efficacy without memory. I make them forget who they think they are — for a second the mindless mind starts spitting wisdom — the best thoughts come after the mindless mind has made love to me. Making love to me turns their predisposition toward philosophy into an outright disposition — a position — a possession of the miracles that happen when you make love to Diotima — and if a baby yawns — it is not because he is destined to be a philosopher — but because he is hungry for food — hungry for sleep — hungry for love — like all these lonely people — where do they all come from?

Giannina: Let’s simplify the philosophy of making love to a poet.

Diotima: What you recognize in me as your predisposition toward a philosophy of love is my way of making love to you — my way of giving babies to the world, babies of the mind, who yawn with a predisposition to life born crying — with pampers — shit — and no ideals — shitty diapers — and teething screams that don’t even know they are screaming — words that don’t recognize where they come from — they simply slip out of the slippers — like growth spills out of ages — and progress spills out of spirituality — when spiritual progress is not traumatic — but fluent — babies are born crying — and poets — out of fluency — when the fluency of love spills the truth of happiness — and it seems like a miracle, that all this happiness happens without a miracle, without a thought, without a predisposition to philosophy, just by the touch of a poet who looks straight into my pupils and becomes my pupil.

Giannina: I invited you to a glass of champagne — and we drank the whole bottle. But then Laches, Charmides, and Theaetetus came over — and you pretended that you were with me — but you left with all three — and closed the doors as you left — and I heard the dynamic of the situation — and the lies were clumsy — and I gathered the utensils and cooked the azafrán —the champagne spilled — and I was alone — writing the traces that you were leaving everywhere — and you elected all of them into your company — and created gradations — and I graduated with a PhD in your way of electing members — and I saw in your pupils — all your pupils had very black pupils and bright violet eyes — and they were cats. Charmides had the charm of a cat — Laches, the milk of a cat — and Theaetetus could meow like a cat — but I could only bark to high heaven like a dog.

Diotima: I never gave you just one grape, Giannina. I gave you a bunch of bananas and grapes — a bunch of cherries — a bunch of strawberries — a bunch of asparagus — a bunch of bunches — and when I offered you the cherries — it’s because they had the pit of poetry inside. Stop looking down for trinkets. Trinkets like pennies bring penuries. Look up to the treetops to find the fruits of la buena cosecha —to get the plenties. Stop frequenting the few — they rarely become plenty — in plentitude — in plenitude — frequent the plenty — in plenitude — in plentitude. Plentitude has fortitude as its frontispiece. Look always at the front of things — things have a front — and they give a front — and sometimes it’s a front to hide something bad — but this frontitude is not hiding something bad — it’s a sign of fortitude — it wheels ponds into rivers, into seas — inducing the birthing of multiples — and arousing the tickles of the feathers of the rainbow when the peacock opens its tail. Induce the plenties to be born — effortlessly — with tickles, sneezes, headaches, yawning, and clapping of hands. The effortless effort of letting the river run to the sea — inducing the birthing of multitudes, in plenitudes, in plentitudes. You have to learn, Giannina, some bunches of bananas don’t get along with the grapes — some dogs try to meow because they think I prefer cats — and I do prefer cats — but if I see a dog like you impersonating a cat — it breaks my heart — so much adoration for me that you have to meow like a cat even though you bark like a dog — all these barks like meows — in order to soften my nails — I hardly scratch — like a cat — now I give you my paw — like a dog. So many lonely people — where do they all come from? That’s why they talk to cats and dogs — and go astray like cats and dogs — and relate to their neighbors through their cats and dogs — and their babies too. Because they are innocent. Innocence is what is valued — the poetry that can emerge from surface talk that is not about money or corruption but about cats and dogs on leashes and babies in carriages — and their chitchat carries their thoughts away from their daily worries where they are stranded in the mud — hardly able to move their legs of lead through the mud. I’ll give myself to you, after you create me — create me first, then you can discover me.

Giannina: First tell me how you are.

Diotima: I am inclusive — I don’t exclude possibilities. I have Socrates. I have you. I have Charmides, Laches, Theaetetus.

Giannina: I totally agree. We have to include — not exclude. Like Socrates — he loved Alcibiades — but he was there with Agathon when Alcibiades stormed into the party — and the three shared the bananas and grapes. Though there was a flare of jealousy in Alcibiades — it was melted down by wisdom. Jealousy doesn’t exist where wisdom rules — and if you can have many — why limit yourself to one? Who says I can’t love the multitudes, the multiples — and who says they can’t enrich my life? Of pleasures, I take more. Of pains, less. But when wisdom rules, pain is less and less. Because wisdom includes the plenitudes, plentitudes. When there is husband and wife (only two), they want three — and three wants four — and four wants five and six. More is more. Children bring children. Multitudes bring multiples. And to be wise is to allow all the possibilities to exist — and to exist in all the possibilities that you can imagine — and then you create those imaginations — and after you create them you watch them exist in reality. I give birth to the multitudes. Let society raise the possibilities of my creations.