New Sodom
Bring me the
light the fire of angel's tongues
in severed heads held high
a burning halo in each fist
a balanced scales of seraph skulls
the murderers of my mother city
Sodom's genocide avenged
Bring me the
light the fire the scorching curse
of jackbooted archangel ethnic cleansers
Gabriel and Michael
still aflicker in their jaws agape
as Caravaggio's Goliath
as celestial Jack-o-lanterns
Bring me the
dying wicks of zealot's flames
that razed our mother to a salted waste
to kindle a hearth within our hearts
firelight the temple of our bodies round it
limn a city in our flesh
forever wherever
Bring me
illuminating torches from a lynch mob
fascist rally for New Jerusalem
smashed in Nuremberg or New York City
shattered scattered
as we hurricaned Sodomites
were strewn to the winds of exile
Bring me the
light
the fire searing nova bright
desire against the trumpist’s warped
despair
the white hot singularity of yen
to put to shame and rights
failed nihilism of the alt-reich unterkind
Bring me the
firebrands
from the blasted pyres of burning men
descended to screams
inquisitor behind impaled upon the stake
alchemic crucible of medieval hate
forging a citizenry of fiends
Bring me the
fire!
Bring it!
Bring it!
Bring me the lightning make
a
rod of me
to call down gobshite fury
galvanise
ignite my words as beacon
gathering a queer karass
upon Golgotha founding Golgonooza
Bring me the
spark of a Zippo in a park at night
to fire up a fag in cruising communion
tentative to fuck a stranger
or abandoned to lust
my lost little hustler
slutting Antinoan arse to a queue of cocks
Bring me the
flame
of the wine-bottle candle on the wooden
table
wax-spattered and beer-wet
on that pub night in my twenties
when at last I'd fortified my nerve
to savvy a newfound throng of mates
Bring me the
candlelight and lamplight
sun and moon and O
the fucking starlight of the Milky Way
cosmic jizz trail
of a song god older than Moloch
framed by tenements and trees as we fucked
Bring me your
bodies to this light
and with your bodies bring the light
and heat of your souls in chalices
to warm each other with couth of
cocks cunts kisses caresses and
the quietude of cum-slick snoozing
Bring me your
bodies blood sweat tears
and piss and vinegar
your fists and open hands
to grandstand at a ruined bandstand
Moloch would demolish
but for the new plan of trombones and
summer guitars
Bring me your
bodies and the songs
of toil time truth and tribulation
of all tribes and tongues and nations
people gathering quick and
dead carried within the quick
witnessed to conjure multitudes of flesh
Bring me my body
electric
behemoth unyoked beast of mob
the poor the queer the swarthy
crippled
crazy fags whores and dogs
all dogs
all barking fucking dancing dogs
to the tinker's fiddle
all humanity
Bring me my
brother back
bring me the sister I never had
all others mad and broken
naked newborn
torn from the same lapel
dead to the pasts dead to us
my siblings my citizens of Sodom born anew
Bring me New
Sodom! Bring it! Bring it on!
where shall we phoenix cuckoos
hatch in fire a city spilling out of us
weavework of nest wiring the world
Where?
Here!
Out of oblivion!
Sodom returns!
Bring me New
Sodom! Bring it!
if you'd live to see it: Bring it!
if you'd work to build it: Bring it!
if you'd fight to keep it: Bring it!
if they'd curse your sodomy
then tell them:
Bring it on!
Bring me New
Sodom in your works and deeds
no hope no fear
!No pasaran! my queers
no trite belaboured fabrications
but your rawest songs ripped free
I tell you open up and bleed or go home
Sing of the
merchant who awoke in Zoar
on the first day after Sodom
in a tavern TV news exulting in his city's
end
some cuntfucker for Christ
Falwell or Phelps, Robertson or
Pence
blaming catastrophe on sin
Sing of the
Necker Cube flip reading
of a city damned for xenophobia
not in homophobia
but a crime of hospitality's
violation
as brute history all kindred must admit to
that we were the rapists slavers
monsters
Sing of the
desolation to know
the helplessness to be for eternity
dependent on the hospitality of strangers
ever a refugee begging asylum
every land you'll walk in
lost last citizen of Sodom
Sing of the oath
sworn
that in memory of Mother Sodom
to redeem her name
that we should never never never never
never again deny another stranger
shelter food
the couth of ardent kindness
When did it
happen this destruction
Mother Sodom lost in
vengeance warcrime chance
catastrophe
if not always already
dead sea valley of salt
upheaval rout annihilation
wrought by any Krakatoa or Katrina?
When in all history
has Mother Sodom not been burning
Babylon falling Ilium tumbling
Jericho into Carthage into
Dresden into Antioch into
Sarajevo Guernica Paris
crumbling rumbling roads of tanks?
When of all
crystal moments
of a grain of salt dissolved
was not contained every tear
ever wept to look back on loss
becoming all tears rivered to a Heraklitean
torrent
smashing rapids cataract over a cliff?
When of all
dawns
were we not waking bereft of yesterday's
self
and suddenly other
under a stranger's roof
opening curtains to summer rain or winter
sun
crisp frost and grit crunch salty underfoot
on the street?
When have we not
been
wandering seeking glancing dancing
drunk in a London molly house
San Francisco bathouse
or Orlando nightclub
in the days after death
sworn to live hungry sleep fucked and die
trying?
When have we not
been
painting selves as Sebastians
or mincing as Rosalind as Ganymede as
Rosalind
as actor charging a bard's words
with a secret shouted open for the gallery:
and
I for no woman!
When have we not
been
weaving our fuckery into eclogues sculptures
subtexts of agons beefcake
photographs
slashtastic
frenemies of fiction myth
the Bible itself shipping Jonathon and
Michelangelo's David?
When have we not
been
making Sodom of the arts in
winks and wigs of a tapdance
ballet torchsong musical cabaret Berlin
or Broadway
to welcome wide-eyed twinklings in the
stalls
to sanctuary found?
When Sodom fell
for me
age seventeen in 1988
ground down by Section 28
the ravager Saville's
Iron Lady bosom mate's
edict forbidding even
school debate on Section 28
as breach of Section 28
when I was
seventeen and Sodom fell
a high school hell
of would-be Columbine
dissolved to nothing
at my brother's death
a hollow child
black winter howling wild inside
the wasteland unbound
when I was
seventeen and still illegal
mute in Moloch
seeking solace in a book
Delany's Driftglass epigraph lit the light
with conjured exile's cry for Sodom:
where now shall we go to make a
home?
When I was
twenty-one
and trembling brave to cross a threshold
I stepped out into a scene
not home for me but dancing queens
whose music I abhorred
black leather rockboy out of place and
yet…
When I was
twenty-one
and only read of cottages and cruising
read of constables swooping stings
and registries of sex offence and HIV and
O how I hated fucking dance music
still…
to be pulled—and pulled off—O
When we first
wake as Sodomites after Sodom
all sole survivors
each of us alone in Zoar
some have couthie kin ensconcing
taken aback or wryly smiling
but resolving deeper love in truth
but some do not
When we first
take one step
as child of Sodom then how many
fledgling souls cast out of Pence's torture
camps
have glimpsed in gay porn the truth of
desire
but never dreamed what's hidden there to
find
that
when we spread
across the Earth
as Sodom's lost diaspora of millennia
the work began
with trade or tristes in the markets
couplings in dark parks
a cottage claimed
a street of pubs and clubs
and lo a village! So…
when you look
for Mother Sodom
look around you for our Mother Sodom
she is here in every city of the world
beneath each rainbow flag
as faggot Yeshua under every rock
and in each broken stick of soul
When did it
happen such restoration
Mother Sodom built anew
New Sodom risen
in revelry revelation revolution?
I say New Sodom is evermade returning
ever forged in yearning furnace passion
burning
When shall we
build New Sodom
if we do not build today
if we're not building in this second
every tick and tock of clock
each breath
each holy breath the sacred inspiration
of an advocate for every exile?
When we have
built New Sodom
I for you and you for me
and thee and they and thou
and he she ze
for all humanity encompassed in the tiny
plural we
then we
we joyous mob
we'll be the citizens of love set free
When do we want
it? Now!
When do we need
it? Now!
When will we
bring it? Now!
When will our
voices sing it into being?
Now!
Now bring me New
Sodom
my Jerusalem my Mecca and my Rome
my sacred home a pandemonium to the pious
haven to the hellion rabble
dogs and sorcerors and fornicators
fuck the haters:
Bring it on!
Now build me New
Sodom
in the earthquake fracturing of Moloch
in the cracks and nooks between
in niches and crooks
love flourishing unseen
mycelial boom town
in the interstices blossoming
Now bring me New
Sodom
as I bring it in this verse to you
in a communion of the queer
a fierce sodality of the abject
bastioned in punk art and attitude
rending the fabric of an Empire ending
Now!
•
And with you as
citizens of New Sodom we will build
and with all
citizens of New Sodom
we will build
that for all strangers
every outcast sibling lost in danger
every queer in fear beginnng here
we'll build
And we'll
remember that our Sodom came from Canaan
under the curse of Ham
who saw his drunken father naked
idiom for fuckery
for Ham being fucked emsaculated
bitch boy damned to slavery
And we'll
remember that as ancient rivals
crowed sweet justice of
the unmanned Ham's children as chattelry
that Europe's slavers raping Africa
painted Ham's Curse on black skin
made such slaves our kin
And we'll
remember that the pious Lot
fucked his own children too
another drunk seduced they say
aye that's abuse's way
to blame the victim
blame the wife erased
and sluts of daughters begging for
it
And we'll
remember that
to wed his nameless daughters
is to cast all wives the husband's child
infantilising wife-as-peer
for sham of patriarchy
fratriarchy's lie
so I defy denial of our equal sisters
And we'll
remember then
that Sodom's lesson
is not brotherhood's no homo
only
but the bloody birth of fratriarchy
that excludes by race and gender too
New Sodom standing as defender then of
every you
And we'll
remember this as fascists march today
We will stand in
New Sodom for the queers
the Texas fags and dykes fearing teacher
informants
We will stand in
New Sodom for the trans
of bathroom hysterias and new panic
defences
We will stand in
New Sodom for the black and brown
facing death squad cops and registry
disenfranchisement and deportation
internment ever rotting into labour camps
We will stand
with the socialists
and anarchists
as antifascists
never giving ground
¡No pasaran!
We will give no
ground but take it
the terrain of history and myth
pressing on to the last Trump
to every last Pence spent in shock and awe
with every last breath holy holy holy
making holy the profane
as sacred salt of the earth
We will survey
the land of rhetoric and dreams
stripping tabloid lies to the fresh loam
digging under dirt to bedrock
and begin
We will invite
to us all strangers still to come
to feast and rest before the work
in these first days of a better nation
We will bring it
this firelight in dawn's mist
to gather throng
in worker's song
Resist!
And we will
build New Sodom for us all.
posted by Hal Duncan | 6:44 pm
|
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