as Audre Lorde declared in her battle with cancer
once coming face to face with death, who might ever
have power over us again
Some of us who were witnesses had blinders and
bandages ripped off
developed an x-ray vision
some of us like survivors of the Japanese internment camps
and WWII having lost everything
developed new appreciation for life
For some of us snowfall, rain, water, flowers, a book,
apple, paint brushes, papers, pen took on new meaning
Some of us when we were touched or someone was actually kind
we cried.
The only words I have to describe this time were
The words written by poet Michael Lassell
“How to watch your brother die,” and Essex Hemphill’s
“When My Brother Fell,”
The only thing that kept us all going were words of Audre,
Essex, Pat Parker, and Joe Beam.
The only thing that freed me from the guilt of
not seeing Don in the hospital was a story I read years
later by bell hooks when she talked about not going
to see a grandmother who was dying, because she said,
“I was the person who loved her most.”
When Don died, I was on a hilltop outside of Paris,
like a cord cut
I felt the exact moment breath left his body.
When I returned home from Paris, I saw Max who
was about four years old. We went to a museum together.
The next day I called and Don’s surviving lover Steve reported
Max had awakened the day after we went to the museum
and said aloud, after I just begun to believe my friend
Don was dead and gone forever,
“Pamela laughs like Daddy.”
Don Reid, Rory Buchanan, Craig Harris, David Frechette, Essex Hemphill
are just a few, there are countless others,
So many wakes and funerals I attended paying tribute
to strangers, as if each were a family member of my own
or close friend, but the basis of this story could never be
for thousands, hundreds of thousands who’ve died,
about massive grief remaining unprocessed, blows endured
to every industry, fashion, literature, business, performance.
It’s not about the mysteries, invisible hands, minds, legs,
Behind things I still think, wear, do.
It’s not about martyrs who gave and lost lives
so that we now can enjoy freedoms of marriage and
protection under laws.
It’s not about men and women I will never forget, faces
publicly streaked with tears, empty caskets carried openly
through streets in protest.
It’s not about those like Alan Williams who worked with me
at The Gay and Lesbian Institute, a volunteer who would say
every time I saw him, “You’re so beautiful.”
He loved to hear the story of how I as a little girl, a little Black girl
would go to the hairdresser as a child and ask the hairdresser
to make my hair whirl and twirl like the figure skater Dorothy Hamill.
“Write that story,” he’d say.
This story is not about Tim Boyd, the sign language interpreter
whom I’d often performed with, who died from AIDS
and his mother who still grieves.
It’s not about my friend Don Reid, the beautiful collages he made
and the son, lover, and friends he left behind.
It’s not about Jody from the South, the first white boy whom I ever heard say Y’all
and all those gay boys I met and worked with at a restaurant in Boston,
who disappeared like thousands of bits of paper,
wind just simply took.
Gone, disappeared, like those dissidents of Castro’s Cuba
Like the friends and supporters of Allende
this story is not about them
It’s not about heroic women, Audre Lorde, June Jordan,
Pat Parker, my grandmother and cancer they fought.
It’s not about conspiracies, neglect, nor costumes
I wore.
It’s not about today where some people can actually live
with HIV and AIDS.
It’s not about those miracle drugs and cocktails, though
I do wish could have gotten here just one day
a moment or second sooner
and saved one more
In the words of Schindler who saved Jews from the Gestapo
and bought their freedom.
Even after he spent his lifetime fortune, he wants to save more.
At the end of the film, he’s broken and cries out as if bargaining
with God. “One more. Please God, Just one more.”
In my own words after every semester teaching students
seeing so many grow and change but wishing my hands and reach
were big enough and I could save
just one more.
Like Harriet Tubman after every mission, having rescued
over 300 slaves, but said, “if they only knew they were slaves
I could have saved so many more.”
No this story is not about them, but like a song is sung
with all of my soul and blood and is dedicated to one person,
one memorial, one funeral, tribute,
where I did not speak.
In this lifetime
there are people with whom you become friends
for reasons unknown
to whom like stars you gravitate
no need for words, long explanation, like a lost or missing piece
of an enormous puzzle,
they just fit,
like when flipping through photographs in an old album,
resemble someone you met once, can’t name
but are part of your tribe, a long lost family member
as once described in a book and subsequent film by Alex Haley,
Roots, an autobiography in which he, the grandson
of Southern slaves traces his family tree from Southern plantations back to Africa.
The search consumes almost his entire adult life.
Finally, he stumbles upon an African village
containing members, descendants, aunts, uncles, cousins,
grandchildren, and great great grandchildren of his long lost family.
In the film’s most memorable and moving sequence, all the members of his tribe
and village line up on the edge of a river bank
to greet him. Alex spots them at first by boat.
As if closing a great divide, chasm and loneliness that’s existed
in his soul for so long,
he touches the ground and screams out,
“I found you. I’ve finally found you.”
With arms outstretched he and his family embrace,
welcoming and treasuring each other immediately.
This family is who poet Donald Woods was to me.
We met in 1987 outside of a lesbian and gay bookstore
on Hudson Street in the West Village. It was called A Different Light.
Via the grapevine, I heard the literary troupe, Other Countries
was performing and Donald Woods, a star student of Audre Lorde’s
was the main attraction.
After the reading’s summation, I stood outside on the sidewalk
and met Donald.
No matter how skilled and eloquent his words were,
I was struck by beauty, his elegant and
dark chestnut skin, gleaming teeth, proud mane of dreadlocks
and long lanky stature resembling the African Masai.
Like Alex
