Lemonade: The Poetry (A Gay Man’s Perspective)

This is an ode to gay men who have been in abusive relationships. Originally from Beyoncé’s Lemonade visual album, here is a gay man’s perspective of the poetry.

PART 1: INTUITION

I tried to make a home out of you.

But doors lead to trapdoors. A stairway leads to nothing.

Unknown men wander the hallways at night.

Where do you go when you go quiet?

You remind me of my father, a magician. Able to exist in two places at once.

In the tradition of men in my blood, you call me at 3AM and lie to me.

What are you hiding?

The past and the future merge to meet us here.

What luck. What a fucking curse.

*

PART 2: DENIAL

I tried to change, closed my mouth more.

Tried to be soft, prettier.

Less…awake.

Fasting for 60 days.

Wore white.

Abstained from mirrors.

Abstained from sex.

Slowly did not speak another word.

In that time, my hair grew past my ankles.

I slept on a mat on the floor.

I swallowed a sword.

I levitated into the basement, I confessed my sins and was baptized in a river.

Got on my knees and said, “Amen.” And I said Amen.

I whipped my own back and asked for dominion at your feet.

I threw myself into a volcano

I drank the blood and drank the wine.

I sat alone and begged and bent at the waist for God.

I crossed myself and thought I saw the devil.

I grew thickened skin on my feet.

I bathed…in bleach and plugged my semen with pages from the Holy Book.

But still inside me coiled deep was the need to know. Are you cheating?

Are you cheating on me?

*

PART 3: ANGER

If this is what you truly want, I can wear his skin…over mine.

 His hair over mine

 His hands as gloves

 His teeth as confetti

 His scalp, a cap. His sternum, my bedazzled cane.

 We can pose for a photograph. All three of us, immortalized. You and your perfect boy.

I don’t know when love became elusive. What I know is no one I know has it.

My father’s arms around my mother’s neck. Fruit too ripe to eat.

I think of lovers as trees growing to and from one another.

Searching for the same light.

Why can’t you see me? Why can’t you see me? (Why can’t you)

Why can’t you see me? Everyone else can.

*

PART 4: APATHY

So what are you gonna say at my funeral now that you’ve killed me?

 Here lies the body of the love of my life, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head. Here lies the man of my dreams, both living and dead. Rest in peace, my true love, who I took for granted, most bomb pussy, who because of me, sleep evaded.

His shroud is loneliness.

His God is listening.

His heaven would be a love without betrayal.

Ashes to ashes…dust to side dicks.

*

PART 5: EMPTINESS

He sleeps all day…dreams of you in both worlds.

 Tills the blood in and out of orifice. Wakes up smelling of silicone.

Grief, sedated by orgasm.

Orgasm heightened by grief.

God was in the room when the man said to the boy, “I love you so much. Wrap your legs around me and pull me in, pull me in, pull me in.”

Sometimes when he’d have his nipple in his mouth, he’d whisper, “Oh my God.”

That, too, is a form of worship.

His hips grind pestle and mortar, cinnamon and cloves, whenever he pulls out.

Loss.

Dear moon, we blame you for floods…for the flush of blood…for men who are also wolves.

We blame you for the night, for the dark, for the ghosts.

Every fear…Every nightmare…anyone has ever had.

*

PART 6: ACCOUNTABILITY

You find the black tube inside her beauty case.

Where she keeps your father’s old prison letters. You desperately want to look like her.

You look nothing like your mother.

You look everything like your mother.

Film, star, beauty.

How to wear your mother’s heels.

You go to the bathroom to try on the high heels.

Somewhere no one can find you.

You must wear it like she wears disappointment on her face.

Your mother is a woman.

And women like her cannot be contained.

 Mother dearest, let me inherit the Earth.

Teach me how to make him beg. Let me make up for the years he made you wait.

Did he bend your reflection?

Did he make you forget your own name?

Did he convince you he was a god?

 Did you get on your knees daily?

Do his eyes close like doors? Are you a slave to the back of his head?

Am I talking about your husband or my father?

*

PART 7: REFORMATION

He bathes me until I forget their names…and faces.

I ask him to look me in the eye when I come home.

Why do you deny yourself heaven?

Why do you consider yourself undeserving?

Why are you afraid of love? You think it’s not possible for someone like you.

But you are the love of my life…love of my life…the love of my life…the love of my life.

*

PART 8: FORGIVENESS

Baptize me now that reconciliation is possible.

If we’re gonna heal, let it be glorious.

One thousand boys raise their arms.

Do you remember being born?

Are you thankful?

Are the hips that cracked, the deep velvet of your mother, and her mother and her mother?

 There is a curse that will be broken.

*

PART 9: RESURRECTION

You are terrifying…and strange…and beautiful.

Magic.

*

PART 10: HOPE

The nail technician pushes my cuticles back, turns my hand over, stretches the skin on my palm and says:

“I see your sons, and their sons.”

That night in a dream, the first boy emerges from a slit in her stomach.

The scar heals into a smile. The man I love pulls the stitches out with his fingernails.

We leave black sutures curling on the side of the bath.

I wake as the second boy crawls headfirst up my throat.

 A flower blossoming out of the hole in my face.

*

PART 11: REDEMPTION

Take one pint of water, add a half pound of sugar, the juice of eight lemons the zest of half lemon.

 Pour the water from one jug, then into the other, several times.

Strain through a clean napkin.

Grandfather, the alchemist.

You spun gold out of this hard life.

Conjured beauty from the things left behind.

Found healing where it did not live.

Discovered the antidote in your own garage.

Broke the curse with your own two hands.

You passed these instructions down to your daughter.

 Who then passed it down to her son.

My grandpa said, nothing real can be threatened.

 True love brought salvation back into me.

With every tear came redemption.

And my torturer became my remedy.

So we’re going to heal, we’re going to start again. You’ve brought the orchestra.

Synchronized swimmers, you are the magician. Pull me back together again the way you cut me in half.

Make the man in doubt disappear.

Pull the sorrow from between my legs like silk, knot after knot after knot.

The audience applauds…

But we can’t hear them.

Written by Jimmy