No Church, No State

The title of this poem is a slight alteration of a line by Audre Lorde: "I see much better and my eyes hurt."

I like the straight-forward honesty of her book Black Unicorn. There were a series of ideas I had about what to write for my interaction but when I got to the fourth section of the book, this idea I have been trying to articulate for the last few years took form.

I don't think this is the final draft of this poem but it wouldn't be this far without reading her work.

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I See Much Better Now That My Eyes Hurt
Adam Stone

You can not call me crazy
now that we have queer
vocabulary lessons and a dialect on our own
television networks Now that pride has been
appropriated into us How we
parade the most
entertaining stereotype Swishen
fetchit the spectacle We are not
diagnosable we just are But some of us
can step outside our lack of the current buzzword
privilege to see that some of us are crazy
not in the funny hat
sense (that's usually religious)
but in an inability to separate our I from our us

The separation of sexuality and sanity
                             is not church and state anymore
than the separation of masculinity and rape is
                                           sports and gambling

Trying to talk about a person
outside of their
generalization is not so much unheard as unlistened to

We defend the borders of our identity
so vigilantly we should be fascist billionaires by now

Enough us
Enough we

I

I am silent now when unsure
I am listen when not my experience
I am never sure when I am too prideful
                                                  not proud but
                                                  supporting my fellow lions

​I am staring at the center of my own
Venn Diagram of sexuality and (everyone has
                                                            mental illness
                                                            instead of responsibility)

                                                            responsibility

I don't like how I overlap with
people I don't like