Mom and Dad shouted at the TV in different languages, both of which I understood after spending over five years listening to the differences. A man in a suit was saying something in a third language that was very difficult to follow, something about the Supreme Court and “tapes” the President thought were his.
“They belong to the fucking country!” Dad yelled. “That asshole! This is the reason I don’t vote in no goddamn elections. Fucking cocksucker!”
Mom only paused to take a quick glance back at me, where I sat at the dining room table trying to do my multiplication. Then she went on: “Where does he think we live? Russia? This is not the way an American behaves. Something’s wrong with him.”
“He’s a disease, Joy. You know what you do to a disease? You get rid of the fucking thing.”
As so often happens, what began as a point of unity quickly turned into a point of conflict. Soon my mother accused my father of wanting to “eradicate” everyone he disagreed with, herself included, to which my father responded with a statement illuminating my mother’s naivete. I believe the phrase “shit for brains” was used, of course only in reference to “those people who don’t know the difference between their ass and a hole in the ground.”
War came swiftly. I knew they’d achieve detente eventually, but not without a complex ritual of negotiation laced with extracted promises and sexual favors. Having a common enemy – the Mormons across the street or something my teacher had said – usually helped them overcome any residual tension.
I made sure to steer clear, just like Europe, speaking Dad when I was on the fucking playground banging shit out and Mom nearly everywhere else.
He knows he has nothing to fear from Court to ballot-box. A woman-Turk-academic? Nothing to no one, meat to howling Christians. Beautiful.
They know – masked ICE agents stalking intelligence, scenting terror: the red-hats want this, want it bad; make it scream, haha.
America knows “YOU’RE FIRED!” as the show goes on because no one cries over spilled milk and breaking eggs is the business of America is WWJD. “WWJD!!!”
Rümeysa means shining star accomplished graceful and noble –
next?
*
“If we lose freedom of speech, it’s never coming back.”
Resistance is not wearing a pink hat or marching with a million people or speaking your dreams hoping to tame wild beasts. That’s solidarity, and it won’t work.
Resistance is not trusting love as the enemy nails beams together. It is not honesty before Pilate. It is not true to Self. Truth is for Jesus, aching to die.
Resistance is silence as you speak lies. It is saying yes to Christian neighbors and doing what you can as you work, as you wait. It is letting proud boys believe they've won and their women, that you've found home as you sow faith and community – beautiful vines that slowly grow inch by inch, season by season, year by year.
Then, then…
when need’s grip snaps grieving sons and senseless tears, forgotten daughters; when bereft and lost they reach for friend, family, husband, wife; when only hope shields pain and you stand firmly between the question and its adjured answer: then, then remove your mask, then and only then let it slowly slip from your always-enraged face — show them your ageless hate just once, lonely soldier, so that as they sink their departing view
This is where I met Babar and Gus and
Charlotte who was friends with a pig
and taught us both Life Goes On
even through tears.
I watched my mom carry her weight in books
to the librarian-lady paid to look mean
but she was actually nice as she took pictures
of punchcards and told me I would have
such fun where I was going.
We were poor though I didn’t know it
as I poured over a Big Book of Ships
and I listened to Drums
that I hated hated hated but
I loved the way my grandma read so I
pretended (I think she knew).
Later I'd walk to that funky stoned (literally)
building on my own, corner of Vanowen and Vanalden.
There I solved cases with Encyclopedia Brown
and found a book called The Battle of Midway
that taught me sometimes a war comes down to 28.2072° N, 177.3735° W.
Gray's Anatomy — wow! How did they draw that well,
and is that what I look like inside?
Where the Red Fern Grows because,
you know, dogs — and to make myself feel better
I picked up The Red Pony. Mistake.
Except tears and truth often go together.
Steinbeck became my god before
I met Corrie ten Boom in her hiding place and
Siddhartha Hesse kept asking me questions
until I found out why a caged bird sings
and that wars are going on always,
sometimes in the bedroom,
sometimes far from streets.
Angelou Birdsong led to Beloved Morrison
and Purple Walker, and I saw with new eyes a way:
war is going on always, always,
but to speak is to fight. Never stop fighting.
Never. Stop. Fighting.
Still later I met Monette and found his half-life
beautiful — maybe mine would be, too.
I put Melville back on the shelf 55 times before
I finally breached its first great wave and then thought:
was Hawthorne his Moby Dick?
Poor guy — Hawthorne was a crank
but damn if his letters weren't good.
Woolf my Patron Saint
showed me her room so that I could want mine.
Tan and Yen Mah who made my mom cry
because they knew, they knew — “we carry our stories” —
it wasn’t easy, not easy at all.
She loved those books.
All this and more in a library,
from my little corner one
(when LA had only one area code)
to the Library of Congress, a pilgrimage.
Memories of mom dragging me by the hand until,
later, I was pushing her chair to the books.
All these people, all these ghosts
dancing and sobbing and waiting on shelves,
waiting to be held or thrown, doesn’t matter.
Life buoyed by imagination,
imagination buoyed by life.
Freedom. Adventure. Suffering. America.
So of course:
Arizona
Georgia
Illinois
Louisiana
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
South Dakota
Texas
Wyoming
let's close the libraries.
We wouldn’t want anybody
learnin' nothin' new…
*
“This effort to change what libraries are, or even just take libraries away from communities, I think, is part of a larger effort to diminish the public good, to take away those information resources from individuals and really limit their opportunity to have the kinds of resources that a community hub, like a public library, provides.”
— Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom.
You said your lines, took a bow —
your part, you thought, finished,
the play, you figured, done.
Such a blessing, the ramp to Freedom.
Such a blessing, California Dreamin’.
That’s when he tells you:
“Stay. Here. Please.”
You love him. He loves Miami.
So…you sway on Santis strings
as neighbors dance before der King;
whisper nothing, take your cake
(strudel, like the children say);
booze your man in darkened car,
hide deine fury, hide deine scar —
while Panhandlers
ban your books
take your wage
choke your heart
burn your page —
Are you listening, Brother?
It's not metaphor.
They want you dead.
That’s the plan.
Forgotten ash in gottes cleansed sky.
It’s time to leave the SunShineStaat.
Escape. Please.
Take your love and run now.
Now.
It’s not going to get any better.
*
“If it means ‘erasing a community’ because [they] have to target children – then, damn right, we ought to do it!”
— Florida Republican Representative Randy Fine
“Our terrorist enemies hate homosexuals more than we do.”
— Florida Republican Representative Jeff Holcomb
“Many people – many nations – can find themselves holding, more or less wittingly, that ‘every stranger is an enemy.’ For the most part this conviction lies deep down like some latent infection; it betrays itself only in random, disconnected acts, and does not lie at the base of a system of reason. But when this does come about, when the unspoken dogma becomes the major premise in a syllogism, then, at the end of the chain, there is the Lager. Here is the product of a conception of the world carried rigorously to its logical conclusion; so long as the conception subsists, the conclusion remains to threaten us. The story of the death camps should be understood by everyone as a sinister alarm-signal.”
I wrote out the questions below on January 7, 2021, having watched the storming of Congress the day before. The insurrection seemed in those early hours both distant and maybe slightly unimportant, like much of the Trump Show; from inside my California shell I sometimes take great comfort in the idea that the entirety of MAGA-Land is an economically-allowed phenomenon that would wither and die without our money. I mean, what would happen if all the Red States had to pull their own weight? Just let them try to pull down the country, I thought, lazy in my Los Angeles-ness, as I began to critique the camera-angles CNN and MSNBC used to make the assembled clan look bigger. Didn’t they seem small, these grotesques, especially when compared with crowds that assembled back in the 70’s to protest the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movers of the 60’s who overwhelmed the Mall? I went down a rabbit-hole made possible by ignorance, querying whether there was violence during earlier protests and gatherings. Weren’t flags burned and people hurt? Is black-and-white really a good look for rational thought?
Such stupidity, because the Day After That Day, the reality that animals had just shit in the Capitol was still with me, obliterating my brain’s attempt to make January 6 “normal.” It wasn’t. The defecation and destruction was part of a program, and I had to see that and accept it. I needed to see that what MAGA accomplished was organized, brutal — yes, a piercing reflection of MAGA-man’s personal impotence and self-serving quite religious rage and yes, probably the work of squirrel-eaters, but also, yes, a terrorist plot enacted by those with nothing to lose against those who simply want to work without being harassed because they can’t wear the hood. January 6’s Infamy was a MAGA terrorist action to remind real men and women who do have something to lose that sham-mans with pick-axes and ancestral graveyards full of excuses will always be out there, waiting.
To pretend otherwise is to make sure those of us working for something better than our past will continue waiting for “things to calm down” while violence and mobbery bludgeon anything we can build a future on. It’s that simple and it’s that stark. Don’t pretend the rattlesnake is a pet.
*
So…here’s a time-capsule of sorts, questions that have not lost their resonance. I’m wondering if they resonate with anyone else.
What if Trump’s army had automatic weapons? They’re really easy to get (especially if you’re only interested in semi-automatic conversions). With automatic or semi-automatic weapons, most of the US line of succession could’ve been killed, leaving Trump to mop up the blood. Was this the real, perhaps eventual goal? Was yesterday a trial run — letting the imbeciles stake out the place before smarter loyalists arrived later? Did Trump want to merely intimidate Congress, or did he hope some of his animals would kill? Will anyone ever know?
Why did it take so long for reinforcements to arrive? It was, after all, well-known that the Joint Session would involve all members of Congress; the date, time, and place were on many right-wing calendars; T-shirts were printed and the potential for violence blasted around the world weeks in advance. Yet it took what must’ve felt like an eternity before Capitol Police were backed up. Why?
Why do 40% of Republicans find no fault with the storming? Some of my friends say it’s because they “understand the frustration.” But, down deep, could it be that they are frustrated the rampage went no further? Are there, in America now, Republicans who are disappointed because there were no dead Democrats? If the mob had murdered Nancy Pelosi, how many Republicans would have cheered? Maybe that’s the difference between the parties: when Trump got COVID, I wanted him to get better — slowly, but still better. When Congress was being terrorized, Republicans got excited.
Why are these anarchists being referred to as Trump supporters, when they should be referred to as treasonous criminals? Is this linguistic softening an indication of tacit support from a supposedly independent media?
Are today’s Republicans enemies of democracy? Do they hate the idea that democracy now seeks to include people those with power never wanted included? Are they afraid of the equality democracy espouses, with no intention, EVER, of sharing power?
Can a country survive when 40% of its people want to kill the other 60%? When Josh Hawley (the real danger here) can fist the air in support of murder and then make money off the picture?
Why have Christian churches been so muted? Do they think the insurrection was just? They HOWL over gay marriage and abortion, but say very, very little when it comes to an attempted coup. Could it be that religious people can’t talk about the coup because they wanted more?
When did America become so weak that nearly half of the country sees in a pathetic boy the picture of strength?
Has America already died? Are we just waiting to pull the plug? What would it take for us to admit that the mind is gone, the principles are gone, the patriotism is gone, and that the only thing left to do is put the body out of its misery?
*:
No answers, just questions that have survived nearly two years.
They look like sweet town-folk,
salf-of-the-earth, flannel and jeans.
People that watch the sun come up.
Handsome.
Christian.
My God their pies are good.
Killers
who pray your mamby-pamby principles
die with you, slaughtered in the street,
your thoughtful guts lapped up
by well-trained Republican dogs
named Dog.
(Damn. I forgot the warning.
“Warning.”)
But! But!
“How did this happen?” as the
flagpole stakes your throat,
as unprecedented wheezes
through gurgled blood
and your solidarity-warm pink hat
floats down Constitution Avenue,
used and dark and alone.
You didn’t see them multiply.
You wouldn’t see them grow —
in Kansas and Missoura,
Texas and ‘Bama, Ken-Tuck-y,
right beneath your woke-ness
and your museum arrogance and your
holier-than-thou Lululemon mindfulness.
Yeah, see? You’re kinda
responsible.
They knew they were safe.
They knew you wouldn’t think it,
then wouldn’t believe it —
“Love is Love,” right? —
“We’re all in this together,” right? —
as Proud Sons and their Daughters
trained for war right under your
upturned noses,
groomed generals in broad daylight,
bought Armani camo, nice blue suits
(they already had the bullets
and the guns left over from
squirrel practice) —
red necks covered by executive collars,
red ties to hide the splatter.
They left their hayseeds at home this time.
You were ready for zombies, sunken-eyed
okies whose farms were ripped away by BigBanks,
grandpas with four teeth chattering
all the way to the West Coast
(or something like that).
Oh, they had your number!
Talk about stealth!
Their fabric was fine, the
Stanford and Yale and Harvard degrees
genuine — plus “Wow! He lifts weights, he’s so sexy!”
(See my companion lecture on MetroSexual Roles
in the Conservative Cause.)
“Consensus?” you pleaded.
“Let’s talk,” you bleated
because — let’s face it — you’re afraid to fight
with anything other than words;
and refusing to believe evil exists
and is usually HOT and BEAUTIFUL,
you left the Gate to the Sanctuary unguarded,
let WhiteNation and WomansPlace
shit
defile
ravage the Holy of Holies,
our Temple,
us.
Maybe if they had worn
identifying armbands?
I know what you’re thinking
because that’s what you do —
I hear your “protest”:
“Wouldn’t we be just like them
if we used our fists instead of words?”
“If we don’t move beyond labels?”
“Help them heal?”
That’s why they’ll win,
StupidBuford and LazyEyeLorraine,
because they listened to a real Grandma
who said:
“Don’t leave your head so open your brains fall out.”
You thought she was old —
she only had one dress —
you never saw her on Facebook —
Insta? —
and then,
and then:
after Tucker and Rush and Hannity Ltd.
after Laura and Huckabee and Kayleigh visited;
giving guns to teenage saps
doning MAGA hunting caps
(so they’d know who not to cap);
after speeching D+ mobs,
after fisting fascist slobs —
(did you get the little Eliot homage?) —
cops bleeding out on marble
blinded
betrayed —
the hunt was on!
Smoke-out the out-raged enemy
like rabbits or Funny Cousin Earl, who
voted for Carter and was then dead
on his river-raft, thinking he was family;
target those limp-wristed Dem-o-crats
whose Cities call to Our Young
as Jezebel tempted Jesus
(it’s in the Bible);
forget, TexasTed, that
HE CALLED YOUR WIFE UGLY —
AND YOU LET HIM;
we’ve got to corner all codlers, socialists and fags,
show them MTG would win a pig-fight,
make that Puerto Rican loudmouth BITCH
run the Gov’ment Maze to her death,
execute California, hang the un-Hung
Next-in-Line —
am I being dramatic?
Because what they want,
what LittleHornedMan masked
with this “false-flag not-coup” — right? —
is to come:
your ideas, shred like your well-intentioned intestines,
disemboweled from well-toned tummies,
blood sausage for rabid-stupid hungry children —
your ideas, your precious and diverse ideas
that helped BobJoe survive his nail-to-the-head
accident and paid for his black-hating diabetic
momma’s nursing home,
high-falutin' ideas like Medicare and Social Security and
vaccines (CONSPIRACY! CONSPIRACY! ) —
equality —
dead with you.
*
Liberals, people who can think
and probably don’t want to die
(martyrdom being highly overrated),
listen to Grandma, please:
“If it walks like a duck and quacks,
it’s dinner.”
There are no town-folk.
There are no Christians.
There are no rights.
There are armies.
This is America.
And their soldiers will sip sherry
right before carving out
your heart.
(Yes, this will be on the test.)
Did she not wish everybody merely to be themselves?”
— Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
*
They no longer colonize with ships.
No armies arrive on my shore,
war-boots in sea-water until they
sink into wet sand and subdue.
Too costly. And then you have to
leave a force to force compliance...
It’s ugly.
Instead,
they whisper, those enlightened
who yet carry the burden of rectitude.
A word, a phrase
spoken through the air,
taken in —
and I’m lost.
They no longer act;
they just wait until I
bow my head
beat my breast
seek forgiveness
from gods curiously unprepared
to absolve.
Sacred Space — Arrival
The wrinkled woman
resting in the doorway
hustles aside,
her bones twitching hard:
“I'm sorry, Sir,”
as I pull my bag into
the Inn on Folsom Street1.
⥨
Exposed brick walls try hard
in my suddenly empty room.
Industrial. Rough-Masculine.
I don’t...feel anything.
I thought I’d feel something.
No ghosts. Nothing.
⥨
I know the old fairies flew south
years ago. No place for the
Auden-faced. And the demons?
Those super-charged leather
dangers stalking prey in red steam?
Now they cam2 from rented rooms
in Sacramento and San Diego,
their hunting names changed
from Steve to Chase, TwinkChase3,
ever-so-sweet-and-
special Chase.
I don't know what to pray for
or to, not in this abandoned church.
⥨
Walking While Thinking — SoMa4
What if the usurpers,
the influencers paying $1.9 million
for a pissed piece of SoMa,
are just waiting for us
to die?
What if these squatters,
these supplanters,
are the Old City’s fevered urge,
lusting after land and
Better Homes-ness,
trading-in sweaty stories
for a kid in an UPPAbaby5,
the ultimate accessories?
Makes sense as senses
now scent safety,
porning lean clean high-pitched
action-figures in Lower Castro6.
Everyone’s lost their balls.
⥨
Pause — Phone Call Home
“Mike called,” says the man on the phone.
My boyfriend.
Back in LA.
“What’d he want?”
“Know where you were.”
“What’d you say?”
“Up in San Francisco. Probably getting disillusioned.”
That’s why we’re at 20 years. More or less.
⥨
Exhibit — Dolores Park7 Cafe. Conversation, overheard
while eating expensive steel-cut oatmeal.
“And so he's interested in you
finding a tenant for your property.”
“Yeah, and we have so much
in common!”
Outside, those who can only afford
the sidewalk are no-shows to the
convention of web-developers and
Mommy-n-Me in Lululemon8.
I’m a haunted old spirit:
“The best never survive.”
⥨
Walking Richmond9, after searching
GG Park10 for Signs of Life.
They all have money, or They have all the money.
Houses high atop garage doors painted
in expected candy-shop pastels.
Millions couldn't buy in. But it's also an
attitude; they fit. This kaleidoscopic
nursery is their world.
I like the sidewalk now; it’s original,
the hard-marked past, bones of my city,
cast when these houses were just houses,
you could hear shouting because people
shouted back before dot.coms and Grindr11,
when bandanas12 spoke not conclusively,
you had to look a guy in the eyes
and the park was full of risk and joy.
My world: on that older hill,
the one covered in open-faced beauty
and daring, weathered desire.
Somewhere.
Or sometime?
⥨
Processing — SFO13
A cocoon of security. We pay
to pretend.
You can’t pretend in
bus stations.
But here, I wonder with
beating breathing heart:
What would I do
if I was asked for spare change
at the United ticket counter?
If I wanted a cigarette?
If someone stood up and said
preferred pronouns are simply
an expansion of binary imprisonment?
If an out-loud not-texted internet-free
political need happened?
Their aggrieved-teenager answer:
“Is it so wrong to live unencumbered?
Does everything real
have to be uncomfortable?”
It’s easy to get turned around
by children.
Now I miss their sandcastles,
the peaceful playset neighborhood.
Nobody who doesn’t belong wanders by.
It’s nice. Just like an airport.
It’s all that’s left.
⥨
Reflection — Flying, looking back
San Francisco: where dreams
and memory
lay buried.
Only ruins survive;
fate has fashioned them weapons
hope can’t overcome:
marriage bourgeois magazines health
money a future an attitude
clean pecs
success.
But still...
I look back as the plane banks
for SoCal, for LA and my
old boyfriend who will greet me
outside third-world LAX14 and drive
the stained and broken 40515 home,
where books and vacuuming
wait; and I see my once-home fading
into a sunsetted Ocean that touches
every time I’ve cared about, waiting,
just waiting,
and I find myself praying:
Maybe you will be broken again,
so like me when you led
my strange and halting body
through cracked unwanted lovely
streets to flowers and eucalyptus,
pro-offered grass in sheltered
shadow and men became yours,
cool-touching breeze, wounded
naked-love in pine-fragranced
gasping way-too-crowded dirty
Heaven…
I miss you.
Shake off this juvenile dream.
Please, God, let us be in love again.
Notes:
1 past and (somewhat) current location
of San Francisco’s gay leather community
2 interactive filming of oneself engaged in
sexual/intimate acts, either alone or with
others, for a live internet audience, in
exchange for money and/or tokens
3 unblemished young adult male, typically
between the ages of 18-20, who utilizes his
perceived innocence or actual lack of
sexual experience in the pursuit of (generally)
older adult males/“daddies”
4 South of Market; historically, the economically
disadvantaged/“seedy” section of San Francisco
5 high-end baby stroller; average cost: $850
6 once known as GayMecca, the center of San
Francisco’s Gay Liberation Movement of the
mid-1970s
7 somewhat successful example of urban
revitalization/renewal; once known as DrugPatch
Park
8 high-end workout wear favored by teen girls
and their mothers
9 neighborhood/district in the northwest corner
of San Francisco, just north of Golden Gate Park
10 Golden Gate Park; known for its Victorian-styled
Conservatory of Flowers and lengthy wooded
trails; iconic location for public sexual activity
11 dating application designed to identify and
communicate with potential gay male sex
partners; lists inclinations and availability, as
well as possible locations for sexual activity
(host, travel, public, etc.)
12 heavy handkerchief positioned in the back
pocket of gay males to communicate sexual
inclination; historically, the color and side of
placement indicated sexual appetite (eg:
hunter-green in right-hand pocket = looking
for a “daddy”). No conclusive guide existed/
exists for the placement/meaning of the bandana.
13 San Francisco International Airport
14 Los Angeles International Airport
15 also known as the San Diego Freeway; largest
connector between the West Side of Los Angeles-
proper and the populous San Fernando Valley
Just in case this wasn’t enough poetry for you, click here.
And yeah, there are books. (Click there, on “Books”)
He lives in my garden;
only I have the key.
There is no gate, no
lock to un-lock like
those posh private parks,
just a tree and some
grass, balloons from a story
and maybe an old bottle of
wine we bag before law comes
spinning around, on the hunt
for happiness. Over there is
our first kiss on the
stone pier they said Cortés
built, stretching out into a
tequila moon; and where that
old lady sits, remembering or
forgetting: a flight to
somewhere, one screen lit in
the dark, yours, watching the
same movie, three times.
He is my garden; only I
have the key. No sock-puppet
politician or fisting Missouri
FratBoy can trespass our
grass, mock our tree, pull
down those balloons.
He is my garden, eternally
lost except to me, safe like
drunk wine and watched movies,
invisible to those who don’t
speak love, far from parched
howls and Christians,
close as breath.
*Dedicated to Josh Hawley,
who thought his own hand
was up in the air
as he declared war.
Greg Beckman 