I offer one of my poems in their memory and also in memory of all of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people who died as well of disease and violence. This poem, which is included in my book “Pink Zinnia,” was written in response to the hanging execution of two adolescents in Iran for homosexuality and to the ongoing genocide being practiced by religious extremists in Iraq.
The writers I reference are the great lesbian poet of antiquity Sappho, the Sufi poet of the 14th century Rumi, Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein, the lesbian African American poet Audre Lorde and the great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. Michelangelo is the Renaissance sculptor and painter. Bessie Smith was an early blues singer. All are believed to be queer.
You Cannot Kill Me
I am not only I
but a multiplicity of souls
I have always been here
i will always be back
I was your uncle, your 5th grade teracher, your cousin
I will be your grandson, your niece, the boy next door
you can erase my words
and a new Sappho, Eumi, Whitman, Stein, Lorde, Lorca
will emerge and write what I wrote
even more beautifully
you can shatter my statues
and a new Michelangelo
with a sharper chisel and a stronger arm
will make grander statues
you can silence my singing
and a new Bessie Smith
will sound a bluer note
I have always been here
indivisible, essential
to the human spirit
firebird I am
feathered serpent
in every opposition
I am the tender collapse
that always happens
before a song
rises up
to heaven
you see
I cannot die
you cannot
kill me
Franklin Abbott
c 2009
Editor’s note: Abbott also read the poem on Friday at the keynote event for the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival. The video also includes AQLF keynote speakers. You can view it here.