The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 58. “…words from the outside…”

.

“…words from the outside…”

Assumption About the Harlem Brown Baby

Do not assume I came out on Christopher Street

as the piers and track began to heat and dance in the night

I came out fifteen in the streets of Harlem and South Bronx

On rooftop jungles . . . pulling tigers and leopards to my rhythmic past

Spurting . . . spurting fountains . . . and baking bread never laid . . . upon the table.

Never laid upon the table before any human’s hands . . . mouths . . . dragon unasleep

It was a natural . . . a raw kind of primitive dance . . . it was my ritualistic dance

into manhood . . . into the passage of blood sung in Benin linguistic breathing patterns

Breathing . . . breathing down my neck . . . breathing in my face

Between the cries of baby this and that . . . and feelings

of being good . . . of ooh I feel good!

And back then I was Eschu . . . the trickster . . . a chameleon

in my identity . . . I played the butch-queen games well

For the period of blood can be a time of confusion . . .

Of direct lines between straight and narrow paths not taken

But the lullabies of night remembered on roofs . . .

Was knocking at my door . . . and the Black and Latin men

made love to those nights so long ago were calling

I came . . . and came again to the hallways . . . and Mt. Morris Park

To sing the song of the bushes in black heat . . . black heat rising

rising in my eyes . . . rising in your eyes . . . your eyes piercing my eyes

in unison . . . the stars now fall and shoot themselves . . .

from our scepters held to the morning sun . . . rising . . . rising . . . rising . . .

And do not assume . . . you . . . my friend

that the first bars I went to were Gay

and had men posing as wax barbie dolls

and twisted G.I. joes

The first bars that I went to find a man

was mixed and three-fourth straight

And the first man I walked out with . . .

had a thirty-eight between his belt

And a road called “sudden paradise”

He was a dope dealer . . . he was a saint

a devil in disguise . . . and he taught me to bleed

at sixteen . . . with the first heart broken

I did go to Gay bars later . . . back then . . . the bars

that spoke the words from the outside “Black Only”

Whites who come in . . . come in at your own risk

And in those places . . . the queens and the drags were respected

and sometime feared . . . they were the ones that kept the place together

And if someone wanted to play the macho butch and read

they would make sure . . . they could not sow future seeds

They were no slouch these queens

They carried blades and guns filled with lead

Go off wrong with them . . . you were dead!

And when I came out . . . there were no definite Gay codes of dress

When got you from A to Z with a man was whether you had nice labels

or looked street cool . . . not whether you were a cowboy or leatherman

or even showing half of your can . . . if you did the queens would look

and read you as being a desperate man

So do not assume that I was some Harlem brown baby

that came out in your world . . . your ghetto . . . your constructs

of your reality . . . I came out in my own

Knowing the even flow to life . . . knowing which cards

had been marked and played . . . the sea . . . the sea

is now at rest . . . fill your bowels of passion with my wisdom

—Salih Michael Fisher, [i]

1983