By Button Poetry
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Jarvis Subia, performing at IWPS 2019 in San Diego, CA.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:02
After dancing at the gay bar.
00:05
I’m a a bath of light,
00:07
I’m a sunburst in full bloom.
00:10
I’m a cascading two step; I shimmy like a store
00:14
sliding off its silk horizon into midnight.
00:17
I wet dream slipping slide; I worth all 10 on entry and 40 on drinks.
00:21
You flirting with the half naked bartender to get.
00:23
I spilled drink running on the painted hardwood, well, are you?
00:27
Do you know I was coming?
00:28
Ready to back up all this ass-shaking and thread, spooling in your jeans, yeah.
00:33
masked boy wallflower gets there like I don’t belong here,
00:36
like cis male presenting at me and I don’t know how to shake it,
00:38
like pants at your boy isn’t confused.
00:41
He’s just drunk on all of this wanting,
00:43
how the salt on neck tasted the same either way
00:47
like I ain’t top, bottom, dom, sub reverse all the same.
00:49
(cheering)
00:51
Like passing didn’t mean all of my old friends
00:54
let me walk out the closet alone.
00:56
Then became the lint on this fit like I ain’t brushing my shoulder,
00:59
lean with it, pop with it, thizz face, burning.
01:02
Like I’m the hyphy-est rainbow in the bay, boy.
01:04
Like my thighs and hips and back, ain’t sore from all this work
01:07
– so come get it. – (audience) Come on.
01:08
Come tell me how my sexuality
01:10
still makes you uncomfortable.
01:14
Like, like it hasn’t even been 4 years
01:18
since the man who wears my pronouns, walks into the sanctuary
01:23
of Pulse nightclub and asks a room full of queer fireworks
01:27
to bend at the bullet.
01:28
It reminds me how we are safe nowhere.
01:31
Not even in the houses built by the people who suffered
01:33
for our identity, knowing that some– some have constructed entire religions
01:38
out of wanting our bright faces ceaseless.
01:41
Masculinity, masculinity is just a costume
01:44
I wear for safety, a performance which manhood
01:47
has become the greatest theater for
01:48
but, but, but ain’t no man bold enough to stop all of this movement,
01:53
being proud of yourself is a praise dance from our queer ancestors
01:57
who watch from the heavens
01:59
as their rainbow children thrive in the golden white light.
02:02
So don’t act, don’t act like you ain’t coming here
02:04
trying to stare at the sun.
02:05
Like you ain’t trying to hold all of this heat in the eye.
02:08
I will seer you at the gaze, friction that blasphemous booty mouth
02:12
you came here looking for.
02:14
And I will dance thru midnight, until we have risen and we’ll rise.
02:18
Watch us.
02:20
(applause and cheering)
02:23
(cheering)
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video
