Queer by Frank Bidart

Queer

Lie to yourself about this and you will

forever lie about everything. 

Everybody already knows everything 

so you can

lie to them. That’s what they want. 

But lie to yourself, what you will 

lose is yourself. Then you

turn into them.                  

--

For each gay kid whose adolescence 

was America in the forties or fifties

the primary, the crucial 

scenario 

forever is coming out—

or not. Or not. Or not. Or not. Or not.                   

-- 

Involuted velleities of self-erasure.                  

-- 

Quickly after my parents

died, I came out. Foundational narrative 

designed to confer existence. 

If I had managed to come out to my

mother, she would have blamed not 

me, but herself. 

The door through which you were shoved out

into the light 

was self-loathing and terror.                  

-- 

Thank you, terror! 

You learned early that adults’ genteel

fantasies about human life 

were not, for you, life.  You think sex 

is a knife

driven into you to teach you that.