IRL: Poem
Whipsawing between passages of erotic ecstasy and suicidal despair, IRL by Tommy “Teebs” Pico reveals itself as a monument of self-lacerating beauty. Pico is a busy man, with more poems being published in 2017; he also runs the zine Hey, Teebs and is the founder and editor in chief of birdsong, “an anti-racist/queer-positive collective, small press, and zine.”
IRL is a long-form confessional poem. In this extended hybrid of monologue, soliloquy, and social media rant, Teebs (as he calls himself) seeks to mercilessly dissect his inner self. The dissection isn’t only inner-directed, but also aimed at the world and how the forces of history, religion, and morality work to overpower the individual.
Teebs is a queer Native American, a status at once over-determined and enigmatic. He says that
Tradition is a cage,
like an Edward Curtis pic
of high copper cheekbones―
totemic, fabricated.
Fear cages, feeds sec-
rets. Faith is a privacy, a
thing you don’t have to
explain―river of belief
that one is owed
an internal life, a rich
vista of idiosyncrasies
How can he be himself when everyone, either from good intentions or bad, seeks to put him in a box? Yes, Teebs’s queerness and Native American ethnicity make him a unique voice in American poetics. These classifications also have a tendency to turn an individual into a zoo exhibit. Yet it could be worse, since IRL points out even friends and admirers sometimes mistake him for Asian. When Brooklyn hipsterati make these mistaken assumptions, the so-called tolerance and cultural literacy they champion comes across as moral complacency.
Throughout the poem Teebs addresses his Muse, usually in annoyance and irritation. He wrestles with his Muse, struggling with his emotions and dealing with how tech-obsessed he’s become.
Muse used to mean
purpose in being
alone―Muse is romanticized
by the idea of possession and lord
knows I can’t live unoccupied.
Information technology tastes
more and more like pink marsh-
mallow Peeps n all my relatives
are diabetic The metaphors
age well Are rent stabilized
Beyond the ruminations on his Native American background, IRL has moments of intimate beauty.
Sweat snuffs the body
like fly paper like tight
sweater―will not
evaporate. Somehow
this makes us less
shy Knowing
we’re both disgusting,
equalizer, like drunk.
A rare moment when Teebs is comfortable with who he is. Unshackled by sexual and ethnic taxonomies. But he also addresses these taxonomic classifications, since they are systems he didn’t create for himself.
In college
in the library I leaf madly
thru this cross-indigenous
anthropological survey
that claims extra-gendered
identities for a smattering of
tribes including mine, n I
wonder about two-spirit
traditional roles How
would it have sounded coming
from my grandma instead
of white anthropologist Sit
swaddled in bean bag
in the 24-hour reading room
and shake and just Believe.
Whatever Kumeyaay word
for ‘they’ Catholicism erased
Assimilationist homophobia
A word I’m not attuned to bc
I’m hearing slap cat scream
thump thump party outside
my window I am the window
of my tribe
The beauty lies in the circularity of that passage, weaving between the university reading room, his grandmother’s lap, and hearing a raucous party outside. Teebs captures a simultaneous personal revelation and his indictment of the system that sought to annihilate him. Despite the United States promising equal rights, racial tolerance, and economic opportunity to its citizens, Teebs still two strikes against him. Those who romanticize Native Americans are more than comfortable with not seeing them or living close to them. And self-described liberals and progressives can be zealous advocates of LGBTQIA+ rights, but still feel uncomfortable when it comes to a gay pride parade.
IRL is an abbreviation for “in real life.” Teebs struggles to understand his identity in real life amid the challenges and everyday hypocrisies in modern America. He does so in the heart of the beast, adjacent to Manhattan, capitalist engine of the nation.
I’m in the city. Am the city.
The rush is what I covet―the
noise of constant motion,
curled in bed on the rez
A sense of options. I’m
starting to (s)well up,
feasting on boys’ ideas
and language and chips
of technology
IRL represents a snapshot of a (self-)tormented poet, a technology-obsessed urban hipster, a lovelorn poet, and a sexual and ethnic minority voice. The poetry is slangy, talky, and bitchy. The poem intersperses Whitmanesque barbaric yawps between bleeding edge pop cultural references. It is of the now, yet it has the potential to become timeless. Is IRL the next “Howl”?
Teebs and Allen Ginsberg have their parallels, but is that nothing more than a tease to literary critics? It is too early to tell, since forecasting a poem’s greatness is best left to psychics and prophets. On a more elementary level, Teebs’ long-form confessional poem is a joyous read.