Place your
hand just there on my heart can you feel it can you feel hot crimson blood
thump-thumping through me hot crimson blood vouchsafing to me the holy knowledge
that I am Alive here where lights are neon and audacious here where my lover can
kiss me without fear without hesitation
yes I know I
am Alive here because I tell you I saw the best bodies of my generation aglow on
the dancefloor clutching liberation in one hand and ecstasy in the other
reaching for other bodies out of their minds because minds have become prisons of self-doubt and manic depression erected by well-meaning love-scared family and
friends and judgment-eyed parishioners
saw them
holding each other defending each other against slurs against prayers against
stonewall cannonades breaching hulls breaching confidence wooden ships on the
water very free and easy and silver people on the shoreline won’t you let them
be won’t you let us Be
saw bodies
drowning tamped down under pressure knee-deep in pools of dying years stolen on
streets of Castro and Greenwich and Chelsea and Boystown streets slick with
useless blood and derision because they’re just a bunch of queers right
saw prayers
offered four-on-the-floor and everybody form a line when they gunned Harvey down
blood on the streets blood on the streets when they billy-clubbed Miss Major
blood in the gutter blood in the gutter when they bound Matt to that roadside
cross blood in the fields blood in the fields but not here not where they told
us we’d be Safe
saw them
reviled on street corners for Your sake O God called dirty fags by fifth-graders
who didn’t even know what the word meant just knew it was the worst epithet you
could hurl at another human being called trannies monsters abominations in
courtroom halls gay panic defense families abandoned in tears and judgment
saw them
cavorting with David and Jonathan through the Temple scarred bodies radiating
Light breaking through the Ark into the Tabernacle because this is the great
tablet-stoned commandment to love kindness to do mercy to dance unashamed with
your God
saw them
burning with angel-holy love on rooftops and cabaret stages and screens silver
and glittering Freddie fabulous unafraid making rent making love making music to
rescue us all from birdcages of our own design
saw them
curled on couches watching Netflix hand in hand hanging from flagpoles and
balconies chanting we’re here we’re queer
get used to it even when we refused to listen running fingertips along toes
and necks and lips face to face love to love birthing Newness and Hope in
gushing torrents of Glory
saw them
riddled with bullets like politicians’ teeth smiling and thumbs aloft bullets
like tears I cried when I learned I didn’t have a little sister after all
bullets like pills falling through empty gunshot-wound holes in fragile hearts
bullets like hands laid on to pray the gay away
saw them
strobe-lit and magnificent in death for nothing can take away the beauty of
living as God made you of loving as God made you of loving Who God Made You
saw them all
and went down to the spot between Fell Street and Oak where I feel the backbeat
of Eternity strongest in this world to be with the street people and the freaks
the ones who came here because they knew that they would be safe here to dance
and to cry and to howl We Can Be Together and I believe we can
and in reply
I heard them singing Love’s such an
old-fashioned word and Love dares us to change our way of caring about ourselves
yes this is our last dance this is
Ourselves under but they did not finish the line because the pressure valves
have burst yes Time is now fulfilled yes the Kingdom is at hand blood on the
dancefloor blood on the dancefloor
and I placed
my hand on my breast to feel my own healthy straight heart beat seventy times
per healthy straight minute reminding me I am here I am Alive charging me to
make every beat an act of penitence an appeal to God a blood-rushing prayer that
this pulse this pulse this pulse at
least might not beat in vain—
~Tom Emanuel, MDiv program, Pacific School of Religion
