Giannina Braschi - Empire of Dreams

I hope your eyes never get tired of shining. I want it all. Eyes that shine like stars. Let me have stars in my hands. Let me draw comets for you. Let there be air and let there be earth. May you have what stars have. May they have what the sea has. May all have hands and comets. May all your wishes come true. May your hopes never stop waiting for you. May the star wait for you. May your wishes wait for you. May you be loved. May all love you. May you be filled with it all. May all fill you with innocent bagatelles.

I am the actor of hope. I am the dancing doll. I am the singer of the wind. I’ll fly, I’ll jump, I’ll blow my golden trumpet. I’m inside — the feet, the head of the sea, the eyes of the wind. And I feel I’m going to fall at the exact moment when rivers contract. I invite you to dance for me, to laugh at me, to say yes to me. I am your dancer, your maiden, your sewing frame. I am the act and the word. I have nothing.

I don’t have it, and I wanted it. I really, really wanted it, and I searched the water, the air, and the earth. And I walked and didn’t give up. My eyes were frost. And my hands were long, and I waited so, so long I didn’t give up. And I became so blind I didn’t see it. And I searched and searched and didn’t give up. I searched for it. I had it when I searched for it. And I wanted it when I didn’t have it because I searched and searched. I had it, I had it when I didn’t have it and searched and searched. My lips call it and it always comes asleep, sleepwalker, sleepless, and it’s sleepy, sleepy, and it’s sleepwalking when it listens to the wind, and it’s asleep in the bare stockings of my torn shoe, and it mends my destiny and my sound and my way and fills me with light and wheat and harvests the wheat of my hands and tangles the ways and spins the winds and fills me with wind and wheat and sound and frost and pain and the hot and the cold of rivers and ways and winds and dreams, and it harvests my crops and heals my fruits in my bare stockings.

What joy. What joy. How happy you make me. How happy you’ve made me these days. What a thrill. What a high. What a trip. I’m so full of memories. The intensity of your body. The way we could love one another. The way we did love one another. What joy. What joy. How happy you’ve made me these days. What a great surprise. Really great. Pleasure so great. Really, really great. Thank you, love. Thank you. I can’t bear so much pleasure of love and joy and passion and memories and gratitude that will issue to the north or the west of my bliss, and I can’t find my way out of this bliss but I want to be inside it swarming with fireflies and wasps. What fun. Love. What fun. Love. What joy. What joy. How empty and how full of passion. And how full of bliss. Love. So full. Joy so full. And such passion, love. How full of joy and passion and pain and love and bliss. And how empty. How stuffed and how complete and how empty.

How empty and how full of joy. I won’t describe you, I’ll love you, I’ll love you, above the sky, love, above all, you are there, love, with your love, you are there, love, you are there. And I want you to be above all, love, above all, so that all is under your love. All your love is there and is above all. Nothing exists without you above all. There is no underneath , there is no in front of , there is no beside . Only you, love, and you, above all, only you, and you, love, you, who are big and small, you, who buzz around like bees swarming and making honey from my beehive, and you, who stop in my heart. Inhabiting everything.

Everything inhabited and supplied by you. Nothing is empty. And you are empty and full, and you hunt me like a wild beast and tear my skin, and you are the hunter in my forest, and I am the gazelle and you the vulture, love, and I the tiger. And in the forest I am the star and firefly and you the cistern and I the cherry and you the walnut and I the almond. And you the deer and I the turtle and you the serpent and I the snail. And you happiness and you hope and I grief, love, over the forest and the jungle. You are there, love, with your shotgun and your lance and your crossbow and your arrow wounding my deer, love. And there is also the boar and the pig and the gazelle and the tiger’s dance, and the love, above all the fairs and festivals and lotteries is your love, love, your love and your love. Above the forest and the feast and the jungle is your love. Love. Love. Love.

I love hiccups and I love sneezes and I love blinks and I love belches and I love gluttons. I love hair. I love bears. For me, the round. For me, the world. Round is the happy face. And round is the midday. And when the moon is most beautiful is when it’s round. Sex is round. And the heart also. The hand is round. The mouth also. Sneezes are round. And hiccups also. The milk from the breast of Lady Macbeth was also round. I would have liked to be like her and be bad. I am good. I am Bacchus. I am sex. And I am hiccup. And I am sneeze. And I am cough. Hoarse. Hoarse. Hoarse. I am thunder. I am voice. I am obscene. Obscene. Obscene. I am pure like the tit or the milk. I am water, sea, or fish, or tadpole. I am round.

I’m so full of beetles and serpents, and I’m so full of ants and tadpoles and toads and snakes, and I’m so full of joys and lightning and stars. Don’t say that we’re so full, we’re so empty and so full, someday I’ll say and I’ll repeat, of all the stars, and I’ll return to the house of mirth. I’ll burst and I’ll work, work, work. I’ll light a torch of happiness. I’ll fill cauldrons and kettles with potions and pigs and toads. And I’ll be the king of infinite space bounded in a nutshell. A little worm or a little ant, that snakelike thing that slithers. The outbreak of leprosy, the stench of the breed, and the plague, the mange. That’s not to say, the breeze, the air, the morning. Happiness will blast off, a backlash of lighting. I’ll create a work. I’ll work. I’ll work. I’ll return to the house of mirth, I’ll listen, jump, cheer. I’ll answer, curse, wreck, ruin, rise charged with anger, fed up with the night, no, with round-trips. I’ll make my way back, that’s for sure. The rest of the sileni don’t expect it, and I still don’t know anything about it.

I’m so full of seven wonders. One is made of sun, another of snake. One is sand, another sea, another land. And another is the happy face, the joyful face. And the little worm. One is hen. Another duck. And another female or snail or male. Another youth. The old man and the boy. The water boy. The trumpeter. And the orchestra conductor. One is the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Another is well-being, pleasure, pain, orgy, silenus, faun. Another is love’s wound. One could be my brother or my distant cousin. A surprise could be another. One is a loud buzzing buzzer. Waking up in the morning is another wonder. Wonder. Wonder. The orange vendor. Sleeping Beauty is another. And the alarm clock is the third. I’m missing five wonders. You could be the fifth. Maybe it’s the black man on the corner. Or the tin drum. The fleeting chimera. The meowing black cat. The hen minding her chicks. I still don’t have seven wonders. I’m missing the third or the fifth. I have the perfect match. There is a lonely wonder. The lamp goes out. There is a darkness that is a wonder. I’m missing the third. Missing the fourth or the sixth. All my wonders are joyful and content. I have them teeming with wonders. I’ll abandon them, I’ll burn them, I love them so much. They are happy and full. They are healthy and robust. They are wonderful. Wonders. Wonders. Wonders.

I have all surprises open. The gift was happiness. I can’t hide it, open, open, all my doors open. I have no secrets to hide. A gift is a wonder. A slow sound in another wonder. Deafness of thunder. And blindness of lightning. And even my ear is wonderful. An orbit full of joy. An astronaut in the sea. Space of water is another wonder. And walking and traveling and greeting. And remembering and drawing and dreaming, a shell with its nut, or a grain of honey, sugar, and salt with the sea. But the return home, eve of the sea, sad tale of the idiot, poor cross-eyed girl at the corner. Green butterfly. Delayed hope. Day arriving dressed as yesterday. And the plaza in its flock. Gold, parrot, cricket, serpent, river, question, dwarf. Hall of mirrors, wild swans, answers, let’s see if you’re telling me the truth, you lied to me, I already forgot about it, you told me yes and it was no. No, it’s not yet. Not yet. I will be born. I’ll create a work. I’ll work it. I’ll make it. And I’ll see it all.