The Birth of a Straight Man (v 2)
When I was younger, maybe nine or ten,
everyone teased me, called me gay.
I didn't even understand
what sex meant, playing with my penis
as if it were just another finger.
I knew only that I
was insulted, that I
had to get mad,
so that my favorite past time switched from kissing boys,
girls, even the dirty unknowns
that lay black-out drunk on the streets,
to biting the arms of all the boys that mocked,
pulling the hair of all the girls that laughed.
Until my peers stopped the abuse.
I remember they almost became my friends,
although I could never forget
the hell they dug for me
and the scars I left them.
Every night, to both celebrate
and atone,
I would give myself a wedgie
with the cord that closed and opened
my room's Venetian blinds,
would stroke my extra digit on the cloth
while staring straight in the eye my reflection
on the window.
Through that act, I found God in his most popular form,
Love. The Sallman Head, the Image of Edessa:
nothing compares to that little red-haired girl,
Botticelli's vision,
lying all naked on the old chaise longue
by the fireplace -- to the virgin that roasted
like a Christmas pig
as the rising sun cast its burning rays
on my shut eyes and smiling face.
And the masculine word tore through me
like a priest's knife,
NO, like a madman's razor,
so that when my grandmother died of a stroke that day,
I could not kiss her as she lay
all bald, all dark, all swollen,
only recall those last five words of hers:
"My bedroom smells of bacon".
What have I sacrificed
to receive this rainbow? At thirteen,
from a boy whose heart in my presence
always went like mad
came my first kiss, given wet with eros,
received dry with philautia. I pushed him away,
NO, punched him to the ground -- with forty kisses more,
crying out, "Surely now I should run out the closet!
Surely now I should run out the closet!"
And here, God's true image,
Justice, shot out of the sky
like a particolored bolt of lightning
onto my foreskin, so that I knew
my pierced eyes already were fate,
my peers' lies already looked straight.
When I was younger, maybe nine or ten,
everyone teased me, called me gay.
I didn't even understand
what sex meant, playing with my penis
as if it were just another finger.
I knew only that I
was insulted, that I
had to get mad,
so that my favorite past time switched from kissing boys,
girls, even the dirty unknowns
that lay black-out drunk on the streets,
to biting the arms of all the boys that mocked,
pulling the hair of all the girls that laughed.
Until my peers stopped the abuse.
I remember they almost became my friends,
although I could never forget
the hell they dug for me
and the scars I left them.
Every night, to both celebrate
and atone,
I would give myself a wedgie
with the cord that closed and opened
my room's Venetian blinds,
would stroke my extra digit on the cloth
while staring straight in the eye my reflection
on the window.
Through that act, I found God in his most popular form,
Love. The Sallman Head, the Image of Edessa:
nothing compares to that little red-haired girl,
Botticelli's vision,
lying all naked on the old chaise longue
by the fireplace -- to the virgin that roasted
like a Christmas pig
as the rising sun cast its burning rays
on my shut eyes and smiling face.
And the masculine word tore through me
like a priest's knife,
NO, like a madman's razor,
so that when my grandmother died of a stroke that day,
I could not kiss her as she lay
all bald, all dark, all swollen,
only recall those last five words of hers:
"My bedroom smells of bacon".
What have I sacrificed
to receive this rainbow? At thirteen,
from a boy whose heart in my presence
always went like mad
came my first kiss, given wet with eros,
received dry with philautia. I pushed him away,
NO, punched him to the ground -- with forty kisses more,
crying out, "Surely now I should run out the closet!
Surely now I should run out the closet!"
And here, God's true image,
Justice, shot out of the sky
like a particolored bolt of lightning
onto my foreskin, so that I knew
my pierced eyes already were fate,
my peers' lies already looked straight.
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