ABOUT deadqueerproud

The title of this blog comes from the book of essays by Jon-Henri Damski with the same title: dead/queer/proud (Firetrap Press, 2002).

Both titles arise from some obvious and not-so-obvious things. He is dead. He was queer and proud. As well, however, Damski took on a lot of fads, both in his former academic life and in his everyday, queer Chicago life. One of his favorite targets was the de-evaluation of the Classics, of which he was a scholar.

The point: this dead white guy was proud of the life he lived...

John Michael Vore, Publisher
Firetrap Press

The Field Of God

I am hesitant to enter the field of God. Reluctant to talk about God. She does not need my talk. Etymologically speaking the primary Indo-European and Teutonic roots of the word “God” are “invoked,” “the invoked one,” “the called on Being.” She does not need me to call on Her, if She is all-knowing and all-powerful.

The Greek root for the word “God” from the same family is kauchaomai, which means “I boast.” To presume to call on God is to boast.

That’s what I find so unappealing about all God talk from street corner to coffee shop. It causes us to boast and imagine that because we are having a conversation with the All-Knowing that somehow we are all knowing too.

In all God talk from the bible on, there is a viral overload of distasteful sexism. God is assumed to be a He/Him. Only in the last century have we broken the old iron code and realized that God is both a He and She, Him and Her. Those who cannot handle the pronoun shift, I cannot handle.

For me:
God is
God is love
God’s love will take care of us queers,,for God is the original loving He/She. And He/She is more concerned with love and forgiveness than sin and condemnation, more concerned with saving you and your neighborhood of domestic partners than in keeping anyone away from the Field of God and the stairway to heaven.

The Church and its bully pulpits, with their overly gooey and false interpretations of the Bible are even more virulently anti-gay today, hurling more vile doctrines at us. This is because we are the last to become the first, and because we offer the most serious threat to the monarchical rule of the Church.

When Paul picked out the sin of homosexuality to condemn, he chose it because it was the “safe sin” in his day. If he had picked circumcision or dietary law he would have spoken against sins his audience of Jew, Gentile Christians and Romans. Then as now, because of our long-standing denial mechanism, few if any believed or would say they were homosexual. Paul picked the safe sin to condemn, the one many felt was not serious and and the one they didn’t take personally.

In the daytime, Jesus threw out the Book of the Laws of the Jews. Love God as God loves you. Love your neighbor as you want your neighbor to love you. At night Jesus kept company and ate with some very queer types: whores, tax collectors, street people and us queers too. He loved us queers, and forgave our sins.

The Bible is so overpoweringly sexist: it continually disrespects women and gay men. We are no-accounts both on earth and in heaven. No voice - no rights nor say. The Men of Sodom ask Lot to send out the ambassadors of God “so we can know them” (causing most biblical scholars to twist the verb “know,” like an eight, to mean “have intercourse with” (ha,ha)). Instead, Job offers as compensation his two daughters “who have not yet known a man” (another sick joke). He can do this because the women are property, his property!

Strange, only God does not think you have sinned when you commit a queer act. Your mother does. Your lover does because you have betrayed him/her. Your brother and neighbor, but only She, who like us is everywhere, does not think you have sinned.

The only way to lord it over someone is to love the sin as well as forgive the sinner. Preachers and pastoral letters proclaim that you love your son for being gay, but not for doing gay (sex), sawing your son in half. The essence of being gay is gay sexuality.

Gays and lesbians have progressed like evolution, while the Church inches its way historically. They still refuses to see us for who we are.
HOMOSEXUAL IS NOT GAY.
DOMESTIC PARTNERS DO NOT LIVE IN SIN.
UNLESS THE CHURCH IS WILLING TO
REACH OUT AND OFFER US TOTAL SALVATION,
THE CHURCH IS DOOMED.

A wise theologian once said “To think you can teach and preach this stuff, makes you an ass. But to stay out of the Field of God and the eternally joyous and gay rewards of eternal life, makes you an ox.” We are still a threat to the Church after all these centuries because we challenge–to its face–monarchical and patriarchal ownership. God does not look kindly on people who want to keep us out of Her Church and Field. For by Her love and leave we are either all saved, included, or the Church is doomed.

HER LOVE GUARANTEES
WE ALL HAVE EQUAL ACCESS TO
THE FIELD OF GOD.


[Publisher’s Note: Along with “Homokind,” this makes up the last essays Damski wrote and edited in late October 1997. It was reprinted as Schizo-File No. 57, under the title “Final Scene: Academic odd ball lands in Chicago for mid-life Crisis, ends up writing columns for 20 years - and his last one has to be about the fucking Catholic Church and I’m not even Catholic. (I am out of here.).” in dead/queer/proud (Firetrap Press, 2002)--jmv.]

Sorry Heads, Worry Warts

The theme of my recently published book of poems Virtually Incurable, But Not Yet Terminal*, is simple: "It's poetry, don't worry about it." "It's life, don't worry about it." "It's cancer, don't worry about it!" "It's AIDS, don't worry about it!"

One of my doctors, and a few of my friends, are puzzled by my attitude towards cancer. They think I should "worry more about it." I answer: "Doesn't worry cause cancer? Why worry more about it?"

In poem 100, where I make this theme explicit, a typo-or what I call an Omegaism-keeps creeping back into the poem. Where I wrote and originally composed, corrected in proof, the line was to read "It's poetry, don't worry about it." Instead, despite all my efforts and the good care of my publisher and second proof reader, [John] Michael Vore, a typo keeps coming back to make the line read: "It's poetry, don't sorry about it."

My dyslexia occurs at the end of words, not the beginning. I know "sorry" from "worry." I can distinguish S from W.

After seeing the typo, I had to rethink what I wrote. What is the difference between the two simple words SORRY and WORRY? We think we know the difference, but how do they differ in their physical elements, history, or etymology?

“Sorry” comes from the French sar and means "sore," "pain," "grief." It is an ouch. Kiss it and make it go away. An 'ouchy,' a sore, a blotch, a typo on the skin. Like cancer is a sore, and ouch, a blotch or a typo on the skin.

“Worry” is an Old English word from worien and the verb wyrgan, pronounced like you were saying dialogue n the movie Fargo.

What it means in English is hard to get a hold of. We have it, and then we don't have it. That's what we worry about.
We get cancer. Then we don't have it. We are "cancer free." Then, we get it again. That's the kind of thing that makes us worry warts.

In Old English root, the verb "to worry" means "to choke or strangle." When we worry, we sit stewing, inactive, letting the evil inside us build up until we want to reach out and choke or strangle somebody.

When I explained this to Jamie Von Roenn, my primary doctor, she was amazed. "Worry turns to violence." Yes, Self Violence. The pent-up anger builds until you want to reach out and commit a violent act.

I told her a good example of this has been American foreign policy since World War II. Americans sit comfortably home "worried" about the hot spots in the world. The worry builds until we reach out, unpredictably, and bomb a little country or strangle, with an economic blockade, some petty dictator. Our policy is based on worry.

Clinton is a Worry Wart. He's slick until he gets worried about the polls, then he reaches out to strangle someone.
Dole is a Sore Head.

Cancer is a sore.

Dole is a cancer, and Clinton the worry that causes sores, causes ouches all over the world, causes cancer.

No wonder so many hated their choice in the last election between the one who is cancer versus the one who causes cancer.

That's why now I don't worry about it. If a genuine Omega typo appears in one of my printed poems, I'm sorry. Ouch. But I don't worry about it. It's there to teach me/us something.

Had the sorry/worry typo not appeared, I would never have thought about the real difference between them. I may have gone on to worry more about my cancer, instead of treating it like my doctors do, one sore at a time.

[Publisher’s Note(s): This originally appeared in Jon-Henri Damski’s column, “Queer Thoughts & Mini-Essays” in Windy City Times on November 13, 1996.

[*As Jon-Henri used to joke, everything we did had three titles. His first volume of poems, then, has three titles:
(a) Virtually Incurable, But Not Yet Terminal (b) Poems for the Fo(u)rth Quarter and (c) X-Ray Reports; when published in digital form, we used (b): Poems for the Fo(u)rth Quarter.) Jon-Henri can bee seen reading and discussing the ideas in this essay by clicking here.--John Vore]