*

*
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. Leonard Cohen

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Queer by Frank Bidart

A tad late for LGBT Pride Month but wow, what a poem...

Queer
by Frank Bidart

Lie to yourself about this and you will
forever lie about everything.


Everybody already knows everything

so you can
lie to them. That's what they want.

But lie to yourself, what you will

lose is yourself. Then you
turn into them.

*

For each gay kid whose adolescence

was America in the forties or fifties
the primary, the crucial

scenario

forever is coming out—
or not. Or not. Or not. Or not. Or not.

*

Involuted velleities of self-erasure.

*

Quickly after my parents
died, I came out. Foundational narrative

designed to confer existence.

If I had managed to come out to my
mother, she would have blamed not

me, but herself.

The door through which you were shoved out
into the light

was self-loathing and terror
.

*

Thank you, terror!

You learned early that adults' genteel
fantasies about human life

were not, for you, life. You think sex

is a knife
driven into you to teach you that.

3 comments:

Marcoantonio Arellano (Nene) said...

Wow! These words are so poignant.

Thanks for sharine mi amiga!

Sherry Blue Sky said...

Wow, me too! Such powerful writing. So right on.

JustRex said...

Very nice, luv. Thanks for sharing that.

I try to think what my life would have been like were I in that situation.

I just don't think it would have been pretty.