"They Are Coming," a Visual Poem
A Weird Catastrophe Poem by Kody Cava as read by Lauren Tannenbaum
This is another visual poem called, “They Are Coming.” We collaborated with the talented singer-songwriter Lauren Tannenbaum to do the narration of the poem. Thank you, Lauren!
Below, you can find the text of the poem as well as some explanation behind its inspiration and meaning. I completely understand people not wanting to know the backstory about any particular work of art in order to allow for their own unvarnished interpretation. So if you’re not interested in that, read no further than the text of the poem.
And stay tuned for an upcoming essay and collage that has been taking a little longer than anticipated to research and write! It’s about the terrorist in all of us.
Here’s the text of the poem:
They Are Coming
I was living in an oyster shell when I found you dancing that macabre barefoot dance in St. Paul of that year. it was just another year in a series of years of elevated passion we had for each other and this country. a country of class and spirits spilled upon the wood floors hewn by bound blue-eyed sailors. not everyone in this country got that grace though. a glamorous world falling all to equality would’ve spoiled the whole party. you and I, our friends, we were the ones drinking and shooting reflected photographs, sitting in cushioned booths and wearing sequins, while dark figures worked in the siderooms and below ground. multitudes of coy fish serving bottles of canvas and raising orphaned children beneath bare lightbulbs. I was waking up to a horncall below in the street when the lights from Sam’s Club plicked out and the band started playing. those were awfully good parties, George, those ones where, well I can’t really say what, but you know those things we did. those awfully delightful things. you introduced me to so many well-established, beautiful men who were just dying to show me around this city and take care of me. oh but just be sure that if you see Elsie, don’t mention to her that I was ever there at those parties. I would never hear the end of it from her, you know. her poor little heart would not believe those things we saw! I mean, look at us, dear. it hurts to even try to remember where we came from. It’s like it was a dream. this time that we find ourselves in is truly the best of all possible times. how could it not be? look around you, my dear. this will all go on forever as long as we have the upmost conviction to fight against those stupid hordes who don’t value the beautiful things in life. when we got here at first, you and I, we were just getting by on our looks alone. but now we have money and music and a killer bandleader and I won’t let anyone tell me any different. this is our own world of our own making and I won’t have it trashed. if I saw one of those twisted people in the street I wouldn’t hesitate to sick the dogs on them. really, how could they want to ruin such a lovely party by flaunting themselves like that? it’s pure jealousy. jealousy and hatred and I won’t stand for it. it’s selfish. do you remember the night when they were throwing bottles at this place? I saw the rage in their eyes and I gave it right back to them. we know how to get by in this world, don’t we? more than get by! we’ve found right where we belong. we’re saying yes to everything. and next year we’ll be sailing to Berlin. come on now. Albert is here and I don’t want him to see us like this. hello, Al! so glad you could make it. we’ve saved a seat for you right here. slide on in on our left.
And now here’s the explanatory part for those who care to hear it.
In the books The Gay Metropolis by Charles Kaiser and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers by Lillian Faderman, both sociological histories of gay culture in the US, the authors describe certain dichotomous phenomenon in gay society. Particularly before the 1960s, there was a clear distinction of class and culture amongst gay men and women. Kaiser’s book, which mostly centers on gay men in New York City throughout the 20th century, describes the gay scene in upper-class Manhattan, where young, inexperienced men would be taken under the wing of older, rich, well-established men. Kaiser quotes one gay man from the Greatest Generation as saying,
Everybody was classy in those days…Everybody that you met had a style of elegance. It was not T-shirts and muscles and so on. It was wit and class. You had to have tails and be polite. Homosexuality was an upscale thing to be. It was defined by class. There wasn’t dark cruising.1
Kaiser counters the subtle Manhattan gay scene in the ‘30s and ‘40s with the more open, lower-class scene on Broadway, in Times Square, and in the gay bars of Greenwich village.
Faderman also descibes the delineation of class between upper-class “kiki” lesbians and lower-class “bull-dykes” and their femme partners. Upper-class kiki lesbians were more subtle, in the closet, did not go out to gay bars, and did not mirror the gender roles of heterosexual society. Lower-class lesbians, on the other hand, frequented gay bars, presented as more obviously lesbian, and mirrored the gender roles of the dominant heterosexual society through their butch and femme relationships.2
In both cases of gay men and gay women, the upper-class expression of homosexuality looked down upon the “cruder” version of the lower-class expression of homosexuality, even to the point where the upper-class felt threatened by the lower class because the lower-classes may end up spoiling the fun for everyone by being so conspicuous and daring in a harsh, heterosexually-dominant society. And this disdain was mutual.
It’s these phenomena that inspired the writing of the above poem. But I think the piece can also work more generally, as this idea of class division in any era, where those with a certain privilege, whether they are born into it or they acquire it, look down upon other people, feel that they deserve their own current perquisites, and fail to understand the simmering rage of those that are on the outside.
The people with power and privilege turn a blind eye to the suffering all around them at their own peril. As James Baldwin said, “There’s been a breakdown, a betrayal of the social contract, in Western life…We have yet to understand that if I am starving, you are in danger.”
Amen, brother.
Kaiser, Charles. "The Forties." In The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America, 12. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2019.
Faderman, Lillian. "'Butches, Femmes, and Kikis: Creating Lesbian Subcultures in the 1950s and ‘60s." In Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America, 173-174. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1991.