While Researching the Etymology of Punk, I Discover a Creation Myth Stitched into the Liner Notes
The truth of most words
is the blood they leave behind.
Every name I’ve given myself—
a kind of injury. There are scars
on my arms that have kept me alive.
Sometimes, I say I regret them
when I mean only my own hands’
work. Maybe I’m trying to say
this: every word is a wound
that opens back onto history.
Punk: once worthless. Once,
rotten wood to stoke a flame.
Now, the flame itself. Before queer
was a cigarette burned on my tongue,
the word punk was a rainbow flag
dyed black with ash. Mismatched
gender replaced with shredded denim
& thrift store leather. All the sex appeal
of a room so full of blood it can’t help
but leave our bodies. Split lip—
a doorway to exit our skin. Wet heat
of a mosh pit kiss where teeth meet
with the taste of rusted bike chains.
The scar is our oldest form of history;
wound—remade a “good” story.
Retold until it becomes a myth.
& I wish this was the whole truth,
trashy-queer-teen romcom set to
the rhythm of a blast beat, but it’s not.
See, there’s another older meaning.
Punk as exchange. As flesh
currency. Sweat scrim salting
the muscles of the tongue.
Punk meaning faggot
with a price tag. I suck a stranger’s
cock in a bathroom stall, my “boyhood”
an ill-fitting suit. Let his cum dry
on my skin while I count the fresh
-creased bills that will pay my way
to the next show & I think this is
the most punk I have ever been.
In the lines above, I write his & the word
swallows a history of other men. I
move from lust to currency so fast
I hope you don’t see the violence
between the lines. I just want this to be
a simple story, but the truth is always
easiest in omission. Punk—a verb
with many meanings. One is the way
that he left me a wine-dark bloom
across the floor. His want less tender
than a kiss balanced between broken
mouths. A perfect irony: just like the music,
the word has no certain origin. But each
lineage is as violent as its sound.
No matter what history I choose
it’s still a thumb knifed open
to share another’s blood. The scar—
a mark where this story cleaves in two.
Source: Poetry (November 2022)