A (Slam)Poem About Words

(A work in progress.  But progressed enough to share) - Bo(nnie)

I don’t give a fuck about marriage.

I said I don’t give a fuck about marriage.

Because marriage is a noun made proper.  An M capitalized by those who can’t remember how to spell the word safety.  Who feel free to walk down the streets without flaunting.  Trivial to those wanting to write discreet on their bodies in permanent marker before touching foot to concrete, a seemingly simple act, a pact that we make with our neighbors and friends, asking please don’t end my life tonight.  Clenched with fright, our muscles aching and our hands shaking turns every step worth taking from a seemingly simple act of touching our feet to the street to one that causes our heat to rise and our hearts to beat, faster and faster until the letters that spell the word fear start to look like the letters that spell our own names.  So that every declaration we make comes out sounding like shame. 

So yeah talk about marriage if these problems aren’t yours.  But to us they sound like before.  Before Stonewall, when a drag queen spelled her name in the dried blood above her lip.  Who cries when she thinks of the word drip, because with every drop she thinks of the voice of the cop who forgot how to pronounce the word protect.  You can’t expect a big M to mean marriage when to a big part of this community it means marked.

I could use the word marked to write you a history of a people hoping.  Yes groping for meaning in the dark.  Stark definitions sometimes just out of our reach.  They teach us that hope is a verb but only how to spell it with rope.  Hope, it’s letters etched with razor blades.  Hope sounded out through mouthfuls of pills it’s meaning caught in our throats.  We know that hope is a verb because Transgender teens write it neatly between the lines of their suicide notes. 

But we are on the brink of a redefinition.  The ink that flows from our hands stamps Trans over your capital M version of hope.  Because the truth is, being trans is the shit!  It brings with it the urge to rebel, our history is full of people who wouldn’t submit.  It splits the gender binary and carries the power to turn I into we.

We are a boy who writes love songs to his chest and all the lyrics rhyme with T.

We’re a young woman who feels her breasts and knows why exclamation starts with E.

And we’re weirdo’s in between who spell gender with a Z.

Our bodies have been strengthened by history. 

Do you really think a ring on my finger is what we need?

birthday post-venting: a strategy

inspired by the epic tag team that is lisa duggan and kathryn bond stockton, we started drinking. and talking. which led to more drinking. when talking turned to ranting we decided to start transcribing:

“the problem is that you and I, and people like us, are forced to deal with drastic change. drastic cultural shifts that would cause male-identified men not to be associated with privilege. …can I imagine a utopia?...yes! but do I have any idea how to manipulate the current system we’re in to get there? no! all I can do is fucking vent. it’s kind of like strategy. but anti-strategy having an effect. so instead of picking a strategy and arguing I’m going to convince these people that manhood isn’t the be all end all, I’m going to create a moratorium between lgb’s and republicans. so you and I have to deal with unrecognized, unredeemable discussions of drastic cultural shifts. In 20 years, in 40 years when lisa duggan’s progeny is giving a speech and people like you and i….(you know we see how) gay use to be queer! the plane we occupy has a lineage we can’t imagine. we don’t know how we’re going to affect lineage. we don’t know how we’re going to affect history. we only know we’re on the right side of history. and we only know because of those who came before us. Hopefully those connections will be seen in 40 years.”