The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 57. ...where will you be...

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Two “All Politics Are Personal” Poems

 

My Brother

for Blackberri

 

I

It’s a ritual.

Phone rings

Berri’s voice

low, husky

“What’s you’re doing?”

“Not a thing;

you coming by?”

A simple ritual.

He comes

we eat

watch television

play cards

play video games

some nights

he sleeps over

others

he goes home

sometimes

he brings a friend

more often

he doesn’t.

A simple ritual.

 

II

It’s a pause that alerts me

tells me this time

is hard time

the pain has risen

to the water line

we rarely verbalize

there is no need.

 

Within this life

there is much to undo you.

 

Hey, look at the f*gg*t!

 

When I was a child

our paper boy was Claude

every day

seven days a week

he bore the Texas weather

the rain that never stopped

walked through the Black section

where sidewalks had not

yet been invented

and ditches filled with water.

Walk careful Claude

across the plank

that served as sidewalk

sometime tips into the murky water

or heat

wet heat

that covers your pores

cascades rivulets of

stinging sweat down your body.

Our paper boy Claude

bared the weather well

each day he came

and each Saturday at dusk

he would come to collect.

 

My parents liked Claude.

Each Saturday Claude polite

would come

always said thank you

whether we had the money

or not.

Each Saturday

my father would say

Claude is a nice boy

works hard

goes to church

gives his money to his mother

and each Sunday

we would go to church

and there would be Claude

in his choir robes

till the Sunday

when he didn’t come.

 

Hey, look at the f*gg*t!

 

Some young men howled at him

ran in a pack

reverted to some ancient form

they took Claude

took his money

yelled f*gg*t

as they cast his body

in front of a car.

 

III

How many cars have you dodged Berri?

How many ancient young men have you met?

Perhaps your size saved you

but then you were not always this size

perhaps your fleetness

perhaps

there are no more ancient young men.

 

Ah! Within this life

we have ‘chosen.’

Sing?

What do you mean,

you want to be a singer?

Best get a good government job

maybe sing on the side.

You heard the words:

Be responsible

Be respectable

Be stable

Be secure

Be normal, boy.

 

How many quarter-filled rooms

have you sang your soul to

then washed away with

blended whiskey?

 

I told my booking agent one year

book me a tour

Blackberri and I

will travel this land

together

take our Black Queerness

into the face

of this place and say

 

Hey, here we are

a f*gg*t & a d*k*, Black

we make good music

& write good poems

We Be – Something Else.

 

My agent couldn’t book us.

It seemed my Lesbian audiences

were not ready for my f*gg*t

brother

and I remembered

a law conference

in San Francisco

where women

women who loved women

threw boos and tomatoes

at a woman who dared

to have a man in her band.

 

What is this world we have?

Is my house the only safe place

for us?

And I am rage

all the low-paying gigs

all the uncut records

all the dodged cars

all the fear escaping

all the unclaimed love

so I offer my bosom

and food

and shudder

fearful of the time

when it will not be

enough

fearful of the time

when the ritual

ends. [i]

 

 

 

from “Where Will You Be?”

 

Boots are being polished

Trumpeters clean their horn

Chains and locks forged

The crusade begun. […]

 

Citizens, good citizens all

parade into voting booths

and in self-righteous sanctity

X away your right to life.

 

I do not believe as some

that the vote is an end,

I fear even more

It is just the beginning.

 

So I must make assessment

Look at you and ask:

Where will you be

when they come for you? […]

 

[T]hey will come

because we are

defined as opposites –

‘perverse’

and we are perverse.

 

Every time we watched

a queer hassled in the

street and said nothing –

It was an act of perversion.

 

Everytime we lied about

the boyfriend or girlfriend

at coffee break –

It was an act of perversion.

 

Everytime we heard.

“I don’t minds ‘gays,’

but why must they

be blatant?” and said nothing –

It was an act of perversion.

 

Everytime we let a Lesbian mother

lose her child and did not fill

the courtrooms –

It was an act of perversion.

 

Everytime we put on the proper

clothes to go to a family

wedding and left our lovers

at home –

It was an act of perversion.

 

Everytime we let straight relatives

bury our dead and push our

lovers away –

It was an act of perversion.

 

And they will come.

They will come for

the ‘perverts.’ […]

 

They will come

They will come

to the cities

and to the land

to your front rooms

and in your closets.

 

They will come for

the perverts

and where will

you be

When they come?

—Pat Parker, [ii]

1978

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

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