Human Behavior

For Iceland

Interviewer: Are you the bear of logic?

Human Behavior: I am the bear with the xed out eyes, the see-through stomach, and the astronaut suit. I would swear instead but lumberjacks wouldn’t understand the grrrr of bear behavior, especially in the light of the half-lit moon while staring down the barrel of a gun. I apologize for my use of poetic mumbo jumbo and cliché but I’m Icelandic in the sense I come from ice and sex.

I: How can you come from ice and sex?

HB: Cometary sediments of sorts. Or maybe I just wish I came from ice and sex, the cosmo-genetic offspring of hydrogen and oxygen. Or maybe, just maybe, I am truly Icelandic in the sense I roam the land of ice.

I: Are you sure?

HB: No, but I’m a bear.

I: As you were.

HB: As I was, or were, I am entitled to artifice.

I: Why?

HB: You see, I don’t want to be the stereotypical bear anymore, the one with my very own Discovery Channel show and make-up crew. Save the planet is for Greenpeace. I don’t mind representing my race but you see, I just want to be ice, do my part to fight the global boring (chuckles).

I: Mr. bear, you are heading off topic.

HB: I even wonder what bears would taste like in a human’s mouth, or what a bear would taste like to water.

I: What the—

HB: Water is just as good as ice but I revel in the inextricable consequence of consumption—

I: Please, don’t say it—

HB: Water goes in then comes out. Reincarnation, something you humans haven’t been able to achieve yet with your almighty gods and fathers almighty.

I: What were you looking for in the tunnel?

HB: Logic. A spoon. Maybe a little Bjork.

I: I get the sense your identity is somewhat stereoscopic. Do you ever get confused?

HB: All we are is all we all are.

I: In other words?

HB: You see, that’s the thing about bear behavior. We act beyond language, we’re human entertainment systems without remote control yet we are really mirror-mirrors.

I: On the wall—

HB: This tête-à-tête is going nowhere.

I: Patience my bear. Listen, if you are a bear, and I am a human, then what are we in retrospect? In other words, if you = x, and I = y, then why z?

HB: Because you have to have difference to see no difference.

I: Do you ever feel like an alien?

HB:Like never before.

I: Are you moody?

HB: Only when the weather is warm.

I: What’s your relationship with elephants?

HB: They’re anti-bear with a nose of terror just like a lumberjack with his shotgun.

I: Are you afraid of anything?

HB: The fact love is a 4-letter word.

I: Why are lumberjacks drawn to the light?

HB: Because he is drawn to it.

I: Are you moody?

HB: As never before.

I: Is it true you are not a real bear but a girl in a costume?

HB: Is it true you are a man in a costume dressed as a man?

I: Answer the question.

HB: That’s the thing with you guys. You always try to blame it on Little Red Riding Hood or Dorothy or the little gay boy or the pre-goth-emo child dressed in black or the Iraqi dentist who just wants to fix teeth and get married.

I: Are you really a girl? Answer the question. (The lumberjack locks and loads as the bear locks and loads.)

HB: Even if I am a real girl I am just as artificial as you.

I: Do you love me?

HB: If you think about me.

How do you begin your day?

In the shower. I use Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. No more tears for me. I am gorgeous I say without irony except for when I look into the mirror and see Jeanne d’Arc in drag, meaning, as a ‘man’. I enjoy this visage-corsage, my skin wrapped around her bones, lovely as ever with dazzling diamond studs.

As a man should you/can you really claim to be the reincarnation of such a powerful female figure?

Was she really a woman? Am I really a man? Show me her bones. Look at my figure. However, my dear, your question is really part and parcel of a larger question: why are most fashion designers gay?

Why?

Well, I am reminded of the time I went to a foreign city, possibly Paris, i.e. the fashion capital of world as confirmed by Google, and I clichéd in green plaid pants and wore a great big pin that read, ‘I Love You!’ It was also the first time I had sex with a foreigner of possibly the same sex. I wasn’t burned at the stake but I felt hot inside.

Are you really inspired by heat?

Aren’t you?

What about color?

Color is really an exasperated sigh for something unobtainable, like Zeus’s hand, unlike fashion, which is a tangible force of lines drawn to form shapes, such as a corset or shantung dress with Chantilly lace. I like to touch.

What color?

My favorite word is ecru. I am ecrued through the night by the cheep-cheep of little mockery birds in my strapless negligee. (See Jeanne d’Arc.) Or, I was ecru last night. Red = Hot. Cold = Blue. But ecru =’s ______ (fill in the blank). I love the way some words can mean what you mean.

Do you take risks with your work?

Today several trees in my backyard were cut down without my express written and/or verbal consent. Even though I might have considered consenting to this desecration I did not. Jeanne or no Jeanne, I can’t stop the inevitable chopping of the trees (please note unintentional reference to Silence of the Lambs).

I sense a little tension in your response but I have no idea what you mean. Are you insane?

May I snip you locks? Wear your dress?

No—but seriously, how do you know I own a dress? Presumptuous man. Listen, what is your greatest inspiration?

Water and electricity.

Final question—

Finally.

How does your literary ‘work’ jive with your professional ‘work’?

I don’t dance, I don’t sing. No jive in me but I have the horns and wings of a white fairy mouse. No special dust but some sparkles from rhinestones or maybe just the reflection of rhinestones in my pockets. Think of courtesans and queens and their relationship with the stake, of something driven into the ground for support before we are all set alight.

In Toto

T. Williams Talks to Birds or I'm Talking to Birds

Tennessee Williams once visited Manhattan where he celebrated the Broadway success of A Streetcar Named Desire with a leather purse. She called him, 'Len.' That night, Len and the purse sent cocktails to hookers on 42nd street. Girls sipped so-called dirty martinis with white rubber gloves. For the clients' pleasure they sipped quickly.

Quietly, the other day, I found an ad in the Miami Herald that read, Tennessee look alike seeks farm hand for companionship. I left a message wondering if he looked like the State or the playwright, never mind the possibility that Tennessee could be a woman, or a transvestite looking for human liver. Nevertheless, the impossible news headline was true—Dog caught walking owner off bridge. Plummets to death, owner not dog.

Father John once said he got cold spells when he entered the church, or something like that. I told him to wear mittens.

Mittens, he said. Are for boys!

Father, I said. You are a boy.

A glass menagerie, glass menagerie, menagerie of steel, stainless steel, I've stolen my lines from the great Herodotus, or Hercules, I can't remember which was Assyrian. Istanbul is a city with great glass walls, erected with the sweat of tigers, lions, and bears. The mighty walls, like skin of cats, are see through. I see through, you see through. I can't see through, you can't see through. I am done with this cat business, the 9 lives of Nineveh, or 9 Visigoths, or Vishnu nude bathing on porcelain counter tops with margaritas in both hands.

A list will be my final attempt: a horn, clobbered, musk, alabaster, gloat, Los Alamos, credenza, last night, a dry hump, a parakeet.

When the Edict of Nantes was declared null and void girls bought hot pink lipstick. Abolition is freedom if you can't read. Reading is ______! But only if you close your eyes when you do it.

Madness, you say. Madness, I say. Say, do you understand the function of that squiggly line in calculus? The one that looks like it wants to be infinity. That's the function of madness.

Aphorisms for Frida Kahlo

Groucho Marx thought we are all clowns in disguise, but are we not also the disguise of clowns—like the tourists at Disneyland, in Los Angeles?

According to Aimé Césaire, assimilation is the first step toward counter assimilation, and counter assimilation is the last stage of assimilation. Return to African culture, traditional African values and religions, is one way to fight colonialism, but colonialism is the last rag left in the dump to wipe the asses of AIDS patients and the tables after the patients have eaten. Society eats what defines that culture. AIDS defines what has not already been eaten.

In 1972 Stephen Hawking postulated the existence of bone-crushing black holes where nothing could escape, not even a gizzard, or light. Hawking has changed his mind. Now he proposes that information can escape, a radiation of a peculiar sort, one that can transmit bursts of black light like a Britney Spears concert.

Some say sadomasochism is a dirty word, but isn't dirty a dirty word, and merde? A sadist is just another form of disguise, someone who hides the Bounce and Snuggle in a dark corner of the laundry room.

With a frame bolted to the head with metal pins, a cyclotron can achieve stunning success in a single session of radiosurgery. In Spain, Salvador Dalí masturbated with beans. Post-operative, monkeys can blink with half a brain removed.

At age 13 Frida Khalo joined the communist party. Inspired by the Mexican Revolution she fell in love with a cactus and a pig. Shortly after her death the hieroglyphs in Egypt were decoded. They all read, Diego.

All poems © Neil de la Flor

+ Interview With a Flaming Courtesan originally published in Wet: A Journal of Proper Bathing
+ In Toto, T. Williams Talks to Birds or I'm Talking to Birds, and Aphorisms for Frida Kahlo originally published in 42opus.