Not Oppressed

Fiends,
Romers,
Cunts and men
Rend me your fears
I come to bury what you see here
Not to raise him
So buckle up and ready your knives
I'm here to get your hackles hot
We're in a for a bumpy thought

At the risk
Of your contempt
This will be
My attempt
At sounding like
Things I see
But don't seem
To be like

I'm imagining the hot, sticky you
Beside the cold rain you
In a hard light tricky gloom
Sitting side-by-side
In a profane pew
I can hear
           this room

I gauge this space
In my head
You fill
And the stage still
Holds the machinegun shells
Of words that hit headshots
And rimshots
Like rimjobs
Your political hitjobs
That firmly reaffirm that something
Using only your patois
That je ne sais quoi
That the entire audience
    Already
	        agrees
			        with
					
*orgasmic*"phhhh"

We are shaken to our hard core
Watching the way they
Shat on fat red hat-wearing creatures
And my favorite preachers say
To this beautiful choir:

Are we not smart?
And we say,
            "Mmm."
Are we not strong?
And we say,
            "Mmm."
Are we not right?
And we say,
            "Mmm."
			
And the judges say
Eight
       Booo! Something more!
Nine
     What's it to ya?
Nine point four
And ten
        *gasp*
        And ten
Hallelujah!
And each number was earned
By the way the right word left burned

Then I take to the stage
Let me give you a taste

Swine sty slush impacted in frigid father to black meek handle pages broken through long pig planted parsley in impartial train cars caked in snow pine wood sap cracking bursting integrality via hot coals carried in mouths by bleached burkha-bound hands and arms and legs and forgotten feet and silent breasts and cracked clavicles and untouched navels but you are of steam and scent especially spent on torpor entangling discarded affection the feelings of protective smiles and diffident discharge beat the souls of feet until the gold is ragged with scuffs let me polish you clean let me touch your shoulder, naked as torn pages from a hard cover comic book, bright and gleaming gold, cold as cream I will pull the sheet back over you and we will take on wings

And the poets are dancing
But the judges are antsy
Or worse
Bored
And how is that scored?
Four
Four point six
Five
Five
And a courtesy seven
For which I am grateful
Without a little pity for witty patter
The things I fling your way don't seem to matter
As I wander these stages and squander my wages on another poetical blunder

And it makes
             me wonder
If I could 
Just say it like you say it
If I could tell you
What you already know
If I could come out to you as gay this late
When to my dismay I'm straight
Perhaps unpack the attack when I was abused
When I've barely even been used
But maybe with shoe polish and just the right plan
I could tell you what it's like to be a trans black man
See that's where I'm caught
Because you probably perceive that I
                                     am not

I guess what I really want
That is
If you're asking for the opinion of the straight, white, cis male child of an unbroken home whose only obstacles in life were set there by his own two hands
What I really want
Is to skip ahead
To when injustice
Is a history lesson
I am fantasizing about eulogizing persecution
When progressive ideation needs no further validation
The good fight fought and won
Havoc wrought but done
The prized marginalized
Will not need a stage
Just to be heard
A new age
Where every word
Dripping from a once-oppressed tongue
Hits every ear as a clear bell rung

But we're not there yet
The world isn't remotely fair yet
Bigots have opened up the spigots
Equality and freedom are decorative tchotchkes
Tying our president's arms in little knotsies
The doomsday clock is two seconds to midnight
The polar bears are expatriated from the Arctic Sea
Cops let off for murder in broad daylight
Because the deceased was too dark to see

I ache for the day
When I can hear poetry
That doesn't need a homily
That isn't an identity
When all I see is friends to me
Surrounded by seers and beloved queers
Who have passed these years of fears
Like Phoenixes among birds
When the judges' hearts are moved by their ears
By just the right words
Not just the right tears

Oh judges, art is bled out like Brutus' beats
As a man, I've lost my reason to be bare
My heart is coughing up seas here
And I must parse it till it comes back at me