A gay man in Santa Monica
was beaten on election night.
November 8th, 2016.
Forty-seven years
after Stonewall.
Fans of the man whose name
I can barely let enter
the temple of my thoughts....
the man whose name
means surpass, or outdo.
Trick, fabricate.
Blow sound...
Fans of this man,
enboldened by bellows
of his hate-stoking words
These Fans
beat a man
who was visiting
from Canada
in an alley,
with beer bottles,
til his blue tears
turned red.
-
Democracy Day, 2016.
Five-hundred-
and-two days
after we honored his right
to marry
an American man.
(It was late, after midnight,
in the alley by the bar,
long after CNN had decided
to never sleep.)
Somebody snapped
his photo in the E.R. -
his blood dripped
into my Facebook feed
Where I also read a story
of a Muslim
at a gas station,
being harassed and spat at
by more Fans of that man
when a heart-fisted ally
stood next to the old Muslim
and asked the young white men, quite plainly:
Why?
They looked down, walked away.
-
We rely in the end
on a limbic resonance -
hate for hate, love for love,
faith for faith,
fear for fear.
In the name
of the father, and the son,
and the holy appendage...
(The latex-laced fabric
of our social security
burns slow and emits toxic fumes.)
-
So that man and this man
and the man that's your son,
and the one who wasn't there
when you were tender and small,
and the man who took your mother
for granted,
or worse...
the ones whose indiscretions flow
unpunished down the drains of fraternity basements,
The man who's breasts
make our bodies pray 'whoah' -
the woman who's man thinks
she's best left at home
And the Governor whose wife
simply couldn't be trusted
Because she went out into the world
with her hair down, and brown
and excelled at their sword-fighting games.
And she cared
as her shape kissed the glass curve of time,
and it hurt in the wounds
that have never been licked.
-
That man, and the Muslim,
and the stranger turned ally,
And the Canadian,
and the Fans who stepped out into the night
to Make America
Great Again
in an alley,
by a bar,
down in Santa Monica
where they passed on their pain
through the codes in the veins
of their fathers' tight hand-me-down
fists.
-
November 8th, 2016 -
Ninety-seven years
after an all male congress
gave their own daughters
voice with the vote -
We can now officially count:
more than half of the daughters
of the doubters of those daughters -
more than half of our pussies today
as his Fans.
We almost broke the glass
differently.
But instead, it's in blood
on a gay man's scalp
in an alley
by a bar, in the wake
of great consequence,
in a city
not too far
from the sea.