We Wish We Were Blind
America has a ban on consciousness,
and we love it.
We are not a proud kind.
We sacralize death but refuse to acknowledge our own morbidity.
We think if we use chronic codenames and sing la di da
under our proverbial mango tree that we’ll forget that
our words taste of vomitspit.
We put down our coffee and pick up our needle whenever we
feel the grinning, thin-lipped faces of our mistakes gnawing away at our sanity.
Our politicians kiss the feet of dead men,
they cut off the soft, pink hands of mercy
as a vindictive victim says tut tut, tisk tisk.
We fear that, like an elephant, once laid down, we cannot rise again.
We can’t hear the neighborhood Judas shouting,
But we are not elephants! Let us let this rancor pass!
Our white, American gaberdine gleans that it shall be
Shylock’s Christian blood to pay.
We let our liver rather wither.
The wine is to be provided by the capital so they can tell us of the society of our dreams.
This is a place where Ethel says:
Turn up the music. I feel like dancing.
And then she does. Because she can.
This is a place where we only wear white and black. Oh, and grey,
but we paint glorious art all over our bodies, different every day.
This is a place where babies are birthed with a stamp on their heads,
Keep me
Toss me
This is a place where we get nomenclature like:
[Your name], the lonely walker
[Your name], Ludwig’s last crumpet
[Your name], the articulator
[Your name], Donny’s favorite trumpet
[Your name], the acrobatic mince
[Your name], gumptor of gumption
[Your name], the kind mind knower
This is a place where we are promised no surprise bedroom alibies, no daily tranquilizers
and no unreliable narrators.
This is a place where we can
look for peace in the mirror and
look for peace in America
This is a place where pioneers cry
O’ BRAVE NEW WORLD.
This is a place where mankind no longer has a fixation on cosmic creation.
This is a place where nobody knows the difference between confidence and vanity.
This is a place where freedom is spelled free-doom,
where democratic is spelled demoncratic
where liberty is a liability and a lie
where theology is the-only-ology
where god knows you better than you know you
where the only utopia is their-topia
where your only allowed to wish for reality
where the revolution will not be televised because there will be no revolution
where you haven’t seen anything on TV ever
where you haven’t seen anything ever
where you are blind to everything
where you are blind
where you accept this because you chose this
where you’d choose this again if you ever had the choice to choose anything anymore
where this is what you know
where this is all you know.
We can go to this place if you want.
Would you like to go there?
This poem addresses the willful ignorance of the American society as well as alludes to the difficulties of coming out as bisexual in a Christian household.
