Andrea Gibson - Letter to White Queers lyrics

Another Black man has been
Murdered in our streets
And I am white as a ghost
Haunting my own grief thinking, who am I
To feel grief? Thinking, my god
Who am I not to?

I am writing to tell you
About 1998, when Matthew Shephard, a
Young gay man from Laramie, Wyoming
Was tied to a fence, beat with
The butt end of a pistol
Til his skull cracked, left for eighteen
Hours in Wyoming's frozen cold, his
Face entirely covered in blood
Except for the places his
Tears had washed clean

I'm writing to tell you I was
In a coffee shop in Seattle
Holding my love's hand when I heard the news
The grief tsunami'd from my eyes
Immediately down to my knees
I could feel them buckle, each one of them
Like a Bible belt snapping around the
Neck of an eighteen hour scream

On the street outside the coffee shop
I could feel my last bit of unburied
Faith reach for the shovel in
The dug-out grave of my chest i
Could feel my own mother
Kissing Matthew’s forehead in a
Hospital where she knew
Even the doctor’s god was rooting for
A flat line for weeks, I couldn’t look
At anyone I loved, anyone I loved
Without imagining hate crushing their spines
Into a powder that would
Be snorted at a party after a football game

Four months prior, James Byrd Jr, a
Black man from Jasper, Texas
Had been chained to the
Back of a truck, dragged for three miles
Along the concrete, conscious
The entire time
Till his head was severed and
His remains were found in
Eighty-one separate places along the
Side of the road

I am writing to tell you that I
Do not remember where I was or
How I felt when I heard that news
For a lot of our community
1998 was the year only Matthew Shepherd died

I am writing to tell you, I have
Been spending a lot of time thinking, who
Are my people? What determines
Whose death will
Storm my chest, will flood my eyes
Will make me wanna burn down a
Fucking city and pray with every
Ounce of my winded grace that more
Than the smoke will rise?

Last year, an older gay man in
My neighborhood shot himself
In his head in his own bed after
His family refused to attend the funeral
Refused to
Collect his belongings, the mattress
Was hosed off, tossed in the backyard and
His house was foreclosed

I heard a rumor that the house was gonna
Sell for an incredible deal i immediately
Imagined flocks of straight people
Going on and
On about how his grave would look
Fabulous with a granite countertop
I kept picturing
The holiday party they would throw in
The bargain of his unlivable pain his life
Nothing but a stain to them
Nothing but something to scrub into the
Rug in the new nursery

I had walked by his house for weeks
Imaging an SUV full of soccer cleats running
Back and forth over his ghost in the
Driveway i had been up all night
Picturing what I would say to whatever thief
Would have the audacity
To rip up his garden and plant Bermuda
Grass when I finally said to my friend: 'ya
Know, I been writing for sixteen years
And the word ‘gentrification’ has
Never made it into a single one of my poems'

Who are my people? Where is my rage when
They are stealing brown and
Black people’s homes?

Last week, someone posted a comment on
My Facebook page that said
‘you’re the kind of bitch it would
Be a pleasure to hang’ And that was tucked in
Between thousands of other comments
Equally as fucked
Some of them like yours from
People in the queer
Community who furiously disagreed with
The post I wrote about Mike Brown being
Murdered by a white
Supremacist system designed to murder
The hearts, bodies
And spirit's of people of color

Something difficult to stomach in this
Life is the fact that
We might all learn and grow at a pace
That will hurt people
But I am writing to tell
You that I am furious with my own pace
Furious that I could be holding
The candlestick of a
Microphone for this many years
And have it burned
This far down without shining a hell of a
Lot more light on the truth of what
I know white is you wanna know what
White is? White is having somebody tell
You you’d be a pleasure to hang, having
A whole lot of people agree
And not even thinking to lock your door
That night white is knowing that if
Somebody is going to be hung
You are not the one white
Is having all of Eric Garner’s air in our
Lungs tonight, no matter how queer we are
No matter how anything we are

If we are white, we have Eric Garner’s air
In our lungs tonight
And that means our breath is not ours
To hold that means our exhale is owed
Is owed
To mercy, to the riot of our unowned hearts
To the promise that who we weep
And fight and tear down the sun
For will not only be
Our own faces in the mirror
To the knowing that we canot ever
Ever be married to apathy without
Wearing the rings of
The fucking poplar tree when our
Country is still lynching
Is still calling the hung
Bodies shade when our
Country is right now rolling a red
Carpet from the blood that pours and people
Are dying dying for us to notice
Our footsteps are red our silence is not a
Plastic gun it is fully loaded it
Has lethal aim it is 1998 and James
Byrd Jr is not yet dead

He is walking from a party towards his
House on the other side of town, and you and
I are somewhere we are somewhere
Pouring what we
Will pour into the cups of our hearts
Spilling what we will spill into
The screamed open Earth