derekpoetrydump | (no subject)

identity cards and kthe body politic

you don't write "trans poetry"
you just write this stuff about
birds and cities and dirt and
anyone could write that it's not
unique it's not saleable it's not "trans";
if you're going to have this gender agenda
you have to talk about your
body
you have to strip down
to your bones
and show us your
guts
and your
body
and your cunt
and your sadness
and your alienation
satisfy our curiosity
satisfy our voyeurism
satisfy our needs our desires
show us your pink bits
perform every kind
of strip tease
if you don't fit in with these
demands on your language
why should we care;
your truths are narrow
you are your body
just a body
not a body of work;
only one type of person
gets to be
an unseen commentator
on the nature of nature
there's only one kind of experience
that's allowed to be universal
and it's
not
yours

my sincere and open-handed apology
but every word that's flowed
from these trans paws
these little gay hands
is tinted and tainted with
what's hinted and painted in the hue
of my own language
that has evolved on the tongue
of a trans
in the head
of a trans
of a man
who didn't begin
as the universal experience
that is no such thing;
it isn't my fault you're impounded
by your own unbounded universality
and too wide-eyed blinded to notice
that every bird and dirt and city
every urban pastoral and stellar pangoric
every burdensome longing and
prosodic elegy for the departed friends
is composed through the filter
that's printed with an identity
i cannot not claim
my own universe
my own me.