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.