Beginnings and Other Poems
Written by Patrick Gunasekera, Illustrated by Ophelia Roberts - July 23rd, 2020
Beginnings
I want to tell you about the stage lights,
how the corners of the queer bookshop at night
became plum as pride
and a gold mist descended upon us,
or rather
our bodies returned to an optimal lustre
like the stars do
between twilight and dawn.
Genesis tells us of how God separated light from dark,
but in more concealed terms we also have known
of a light which may splinter darkness
from the inside out.
And it was this such light I saw then,
in LED gifts of sight and certitude
tracing the walls with effusive flares
and spreading our tinted lips wide as heaven,
when in the many truths of our creation
we glowed righteously
as prayers
illuminating the shadows.
Homo
Content warning: sexual references
my bones are denser than length and time
hiding in the marrow
are secret prayers
and forgotten family meals
and stories of vast simplicity:
who told me how to rub my dick
through my hand
like the roundness of roti dough
and with the light of absolute compassion in my eyes
who gifted me a love of men
that I may be totally awake within his wet lips
and when he does not love me back
who rejoiced alongside me
the cherry pleated rayon dress
stroking these bare legs with little scuffs like a lover
when I wore her for the first time
and knew she would be my favourite
who dried my tears with song
though I did not hear them then
as I howled over the acuity of these truths
as I clawed into my guts for some seed of depravity
that I may mill into dust and fiction
and never know again
but my bones always remember in which directions to expand
within them lives all the dances of my body
who was born from a joy too humid to be hidden
මෛත්රිය (Maitriya)
I believe in the goodness of God
but not the power of God
God has never given me power,
I have been mothering power
since I was a baby among the grasses,
curling my palms around the sky
as my little heart galloped on clouds
But God has given me goodness
Through goodness comes movement
under the bellows of weapon
Through goodness comes love
at the centre of iron boulders
Through goodness comes dance,
stirring pliancy into bones
who have forgotten how to hold the earth
away from the breath of conquer
This is where God is
Not in the hand of destruction
Not in the hand of charity
But in the sheer touch between two people,
in love for the first time
and seeing the whole truth of goodness
in the other
and themselves
“These poems illustrate the interconnectedness and interdependence I experience between my queerness, culture and faith. I express these parts of me through writing to resist the whitewashing and secularising of my queer narrative, to remember and reify the inherent queerness of my brownness, and as a way of finding/returning home through imaginatively collating uncovered and remembered aspects of myself and my histories.”
- Patrick Gunasekera