You Stare, I'll stare back until you see me...

Today I wore my red and yellow striped shirt down the
Main street of Bishkek.
People stared with knowing looks:  foreigner, stranger,
Non-conformist.  Football fan.  Madrid.
I bought it because it was 2 litas at a thrift shop in Lithuania.
I like the colors, I like the way they scream life.
I know who I am.  Do you?  

Today I wore some tight thrift store khakis and my purse
Down the street in Atlantic City.
Some men yelled gay slurs out their car windows.
The purse was a gift from my sister, a memory of Guatemala, a place that
Changed my soul.  The khakis were the only ones that fit that day.
And I thought to myself, "how strange that you think you know my sexual behavior
patterns on the basis of my clothes."  I can't say that I can rightly say I'm
sexual.  I like girls.  I'd like to have sex someday.  But really ya'll?
I know who I am.  Do you?

Today I sat down on a curb outside the Hilton in downtown New Orleans.
I was so starved I couldn't wait to eat my styrofoam-tray dinner, and I wasn't about to
get the insulation and paint from my beard all over their pretty Hilton beds.
And ya'll stared at me with pointed looks saying "what are you doing here?"
"You don't belong here."  I had spent the day volunteering, cleaning up hurricane-wrecked houses.
When I finished my dinner, I stood up, walked through the Hilton to my room that I never would
Have purchased for myself, for shame of being such a casual consumer.
I know who I am.  Do you?

And you know what, it pisses me off that you ask me about Americans and
Where I'm gonna live and when I'm going home.  Like you know everything belongs
somewhere and you know where I belong.  But I am an American--I am a fifth-generation
immigrant, I mean, the last five generations of my family have migrated West and now
we've come full-circle back, I know who I am.  Do you?  And you know, it's not that
You notice I'm foreign, that's fine, it's not that you see that I'm a different kind. 
I've moved at least 15 times, I've never been normal in all my life.

But you get so caught up on what you think you know,
You don't look me in the eye.
 
And there's not a face that you meet,
famous or forgettable,
that's mundane, normal, or trite. 
Each one is human,
We all have our reasons,
We all have our faces and lies.

But man, look at a brother, when he's standing before you,
Cuz you know, he ain't a Jew or a Christian, a Muslim, a black man,
He ain't a man or a woman, a president or a preacher, a bum or a
Soldier or a kid with mental disabilities,
She's a human just the same as I am
He's a person worth looking in the eye.
A grandma worth hearing, just cuz God made her.
A boy with a light in his eyes.