watching an American panel chat show
I am in the moments before the thug circle turns from joking to beating
when the batons and boots replace the jibes
dark dementi
this chatter isn’t news, it stirs
old memories buried ocean silt deep
pushed into a corner, an overbearing boss with a knife
spotlit on the side of a road, pig shooters drunk on blood and beer
king hit in a club, on a busy street
broken nose and fractured cheek
this Australian manscape
in an online discussion I am told I should fear the rise of Islam
yet I mostly fear the white men in my city
I am told there are freedoms for my kind in the Zionist state
yet my kind are also under the rubble from its bombing
I am told we will be overwhelmed by a belief system at odds with our love
yet I’ve been held in the warm brown arms of a man of this faith
they are chatting while I watch
they are circling with jokes and jibes
we are their fair game, sport for their angry mob
my discomfort is the point, and I absorb it all
in my cancer cells, muscle, tissue, memory, dreaming
then I write words chosen with careless transgression
and I fuck with what my disease has left for me
I wrap my body in bright silk scarves
and walk limp-wristed in back streets at night
I wink at strangers on the train, some wink back
I make camp jokes at the gym as I lift weights
I turn the chat show down and listen
to drums and footsteps and an invitation
a chorus of colour and hope
with my sex and scarves and limp wrist
I dance
