Homo Will Not Inherit

Downtown anywhere and between the roil

of bathhouse steam—up there the linens of joy

and shame must be laundered again and again,

all night—downtown anywhere

and between the column of feathering steam

unknotting itself thirty feet above the avenue’s

shimmered azaleas of gasoline,

between the steam and the ruin

of the Cinema Paree (marquee advertising

its own milky vacancy, broken showcases sealed,

ticketbooth a hostage wrapped in tape

and black plastic, captive in this zone

of blackfronted bars and bookstores

where there’s nothing to read

but longing’s repetitive texts,

where desire’s unpoliced, or nearly so)

someone’s posted a xeroxed headshot

of Jesus: permed, blonde, blurred at the edges

as though photographed through a greasy lens,

and inked beside him, in marker strokes:

HOMO WILL NOT INHERIT. Repent & be saved.

I’ll tell you what I’ll inherit: the margins

which have always been mine, downtown after hours

when there’s nothing left to buy,

the dreaming shops turned in on themselves,

seamless, intent on the perfection of display,

the bodegas and offices lined up, impenetrable:

edges no one wants, no one’s watching. Though

the borders of this shadow-zone (mirror and dream

of the shattered streets around it) are chartered

by the police, and they are required,

some nights, to redefine them. But not now, at twilight,

permission’s descending hour, early winter darkness

pillared by smoldering plumes. The public city’s

ledgered and locked, but the secret city’s boundless;

from which do these tumbling towers arise?

I’ll tell you what I’ll inherit: steam,

and the blinding symmetry of some towering man,

fifteen minutes of forgetfulness incarnate.

I’ve seen flame flicker around the edges of the body,

pentecostal, evidence of inhabitation.

And I have been possessed of the god myself,

I have been the temporary apparition

salving another, I have been his visitation, I say it

without arrogance, I have been an angel

for minutes at a time, and I have for hours

believed—without judgement, without condemnation—

that in each body, however obscured or recast,

is the divine body—common, habitable—

the way in a field of sunflowers

you can see every bloom’s

the multiple expression

of a single shining idea,

which is the face hammered into joy.

I’ll tell you what I’ll inherit:

stupidity, erasure, exile

inside the chalked lines of the police,

who must resemble what they punish,

the exile you require of me,

you who’s posted this invitation

to a heaven nobody wants.

You who must be patrolled,

who adore constraint, I’ll tell you

what I’ll inherit, not your pallid temple

but a real palace, the anticipated

and actual memory, the moment flooded

by skin and the knowledge of it,

the gesture and its description

—do I need to say it?—

the flesh and the word. And I’ll tell you,

you who can’t wait to abandon your body,

what you want me to, maybe something

like you’ve imagined, a dirty story:

Years ago, in the baths,

a man walked into the steam,

the gorgeous deep indigo of him gleaming,

solid tight flanks, the intricately ridged abdomen—

and after he invited me to his room,

nudging his key toward me,

as if perhaps I spoke another tongue

and required the plainest of gestures,

after we’d been, you understand,

worshipping a while in his church,

he said to me, I’m going to punish your mouth.

I can’t tell you what that did to me.

My shame was redeemed then;

I won’t need to burn in the afterlife.

It wasn’t that he hurt me,

more than that: the spirit’s transactions

are enacted now, here—no one needs

your eternity. This failing city’s

radiant as any we’ll ever know,

paved with oily rainbow, charred gates

jeweled with tags, swoops of letters

over letters, indecipherable as anything

written by desire. I’m not ashamed

to love Babylon’s scrawl. How could I be?

It’s written on my face as much as on

these walls. This city’s inescapable,

gorgeous, and on fire. I have my kingdom.

Source: Atlantis: Poems (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1995)