Queer as in Aphrodite

For my partner and all my dear friends, mentors, strangers, and predecessors in the Queer world. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and I couldn't stand without you.

A poem about what the saying "Not gay as in happy, Queer as in I love you" means to me, with love as defined by my understanding of Aphrodite - motions of the heart and soul that haven't been bridled by any lawmaker yet and won't be this time either. She/they/he is a deity who appears across cultic practice as trans/non-binary/intersex and as a lover and patron of Queer feelings, identities and bodies. There is no Divine Feminine where the feminine is confined. Death to transphobia. All joy and courage on your Queer journeys xxx

Queer as in I love you.
Old love.
Pre-Christian, amoral love.
The stuff of goddesses.
Queer as in heathen.
Love as in unleashing.
Non-systemic, unscripted.
Not Queer as in support network,
not Queer as in advocate,
not Queer as in charity.
Queer as in pack,
Queer as in bond.
Queer as in us
and this fragile moment
and inevitable forever.
Queer as in nature.
Queer as in agony and ecstasy.
Queer as in anarchy.

Not Queer as in aesthetic,
Queer as in inscribe you in my bone marrow.

Not Queer as in soft,
Queer as in raw.

Not Queer as in patient,
Queer as in riot.

Not Queer as in embrace,
Queer as in grasp.
Queer as in pull me from the pit.
Queer that saves.
Queer that heals through breaking and balming.

Not Queer as in deconstruct,
Queer as in fracture,
Queer as in expose.
Queer as in churning and tumbling and transforming.
Not Queer as in trouble the waters,
Queer as in these waters are trouble.
Queer as in gigantic.
Queer that takes comfort in darkness.

Not Queer as in I forgive,
Queer as in they will come for us
and I will avenge you.
Queer as in blood on my sword.
Queer that burns the topless towers of Ilium.

Queer as in Aphroditos.
Queer that was born in the ocean,
wild and fluid, teeming with life and deadly.
Queer as in the first Olympian was Love,
Love from the ocean,
Love that drowns.
As Love was the first emotion
and first truth
and first pledge.
The first altars were Queer altars,
because Queer is knowing the uncontrollable power of Love,
and that it's not how many kids you want by the time you’re thirty,
or what kind of house you want to live in, in what kind of town,
and who best suits that plan.
Love is not the old ball and chain
or the good genes
or the smart match
or the white wedding.
Love isn’t picturesque
or conforming.
It isn’t a question of “worth it” or “good sense”.
Lovers don’t weigh and measure
gain versus loss, sin versus virtue.
Fire doesn’t choose what fuels it,
tides don’t look to other moons.

Love isn’t a choice,
it’s a calling,
and Queer is to answer it
wholly.

Everything else is immaterial.
Love isn’t one option in many,
it doesn’t have pros and cons, risks and rewards.
It happens to me.
It’s my climate.
It’s my condition.
It’s my context.
Run from it, refuse it, suffer for it. It’s still happening.
It’s there now.
It's remade me.
So, I guess, in for a penny…

So Queer as in I love you.
I call,
I answer.

Queer as in I love you like Aphrodite loves:
as catalyst,
wild,
wicked,
filthy,
rending,
nourishing,
elating,
treasuring,
warlike,
and utterly at peace.

Queer as in a sanctuary in the heart.
Queer to build us a palace in the sky.
Queer down in the dirt.
Queer to tear it all apart,
and in the wreckage,
in the wasteland,
in the reclaiming…

Queer as in thank fuck I found you.
Queer as in you are mine.
Queer as in damn the consequences.
Queer to reshape the world.
Queer as in primordial.
Queer as in rapture.
Queer as in sacred.

In the temples to our ancient selves
that we raise
over the rubble
of the master’s house,
in our bedrooms,
in our marches,
in our screams of laughter,
in our raucous singing,
in our quilting and our mending,
in our howl,
on our taste buds,
in the meeting of our bodies,
in the first breath of hope…

Queer
as in I love you.