Faggot

Faggot

Imagine the constant drumming upon your eyelids,
Faggot! Queer! Cocksucker.
Imagine the constant words being thrown upon your being
Fairy
Imagine for every time you yelled those words as a kid
Sissy
That you took a blow from an unseen hand
Word

Now you might imagine what it’s like
to be pummeled by words, thoughts, ideas, phrases
which attack like violence.
How many times did you call me a faggot?
How many times did I call you a faggot,
meaning that you were the most horrible type of person
we could imagine.
Now image that I am throwing those words at myself,
hitting myself with my hate, your hate, our hate
of faggots
The worst possible insult on the playground,
The modern-day lepers that no one would talk to.

We didn’t know any then
(faggots)
Only threw those insults,
(faggot)
hurled those words with carelessness.
Did you know how much they would scar me later?
My words and yours
Mingling, tangled in hate
At the
Unknown
(faggot).

Then you ask me
When I am 14 and just understanding sex,
You ask me if I am gay.
Not a faggot this time.
"PETER, ARE YOU GAY?"
The words screaming, striking harder now that you know
And I know them to be true.
That is what hurts.
That you would ask me in front of my other friends,
That you force me to answer or forever be a faggot,
That I can forgive.
But the fact that I know the truth is worse than the question.
I am one. I am the worst. I am the FAGGOT.
And this time I cannot call someone else what I am,
I cannot turn the blame away again,
Not this time,
Not with my friends in a circle, me in the center,
and you asking me if I am
gay.
I must answer.

"I wont even dignify that with a response."
My answer.
I should have just said that I was gay.
Everyone knew anyway.
Deflecting the answer=admitting guilt=guilty of being a
faggot.
Peter=faggot.
You made that horrible equation work.
You built the equation and made me understand.

Faggot

an angry poem by Peter Dell