Sestina: for Brent

By Aaron Johnson

The chords you rendered so virile and careful
Which sweetened the air in days before your heart
Required assistance to pump tainted blood
While kids at school played "smear the queer"
And I - excluded- watched them wrestle
Recalled your music, sensed something not right.

These same brute kids had called me queer, by what right?
I wondered, was it because I- being careful-
Refused to roll upon their ground and wrestle?
Yet I knew a boy who fit their mold by heart
And I kicked that dog, in self defense yelled "queer!"
Defended myself with his sacrificial blood.

At the too early age of two they took blood
From my sister to discover what wasn't right,
Arthritis the reason she walked pained and queer
And I was taught, from day one to be careful
But her weakest body possessed strongest heart,
Though they said she was too fragile to wrestle.

Dear man I watched you as you wrestled
With the languid mutiny of your own blood,
Dreading the inevitable stop of your heart.
You tested positive, though you looked all right,
And the fearful gave qualified hugs, too careful
To reach out to a loving man labeled queer

And now I am grown and defend those queer
In every sense, for the different must wrestle
With stigmas, always strive to be careful
(Though the most careful kids still loose the most blood,
When trying to stand up for what is most right).
I felt shame when I had abandoned my heart-

So I strive to amend every blackened heart
Knowing that nothing, which is human, is queer,
And not all fatalistic knells ring right
My sister has proved the most apt to wrestle
So you will sustain, long after your blood,
In these tapes: bold Chopin and Debussy careful-

Your heart, in the piano, finds the beat right;
Blood no longer wrestles, nothing is queer
In the chords you rendered so virile and careful.