My past few articles have been a bit dense, a bit wordy, and a bit hard to swallow. Poetry allows us, sometimes to transform difficult situations and aspects of life into positive recognition of a world community. With this in mind, I decided to focus on the experience of a fellow mylgbtplus writer, Tucker Russell, who, along with his late fiance, David Patterson, has experienced more pain that anyone should in a lifetime. (The poem was originally written to be a performance piece, and, being such, please excuse the prose-like layout.)

David’s Pink Triangle or Beat Me Until I Can Breathe Again

All you need is love.

All you need is love.

All you need is love, love, where is all the love?

His name was David Paterson.

He was born on March 12, 1981.

He had blond hair, a humor like the three stooges and childhood like Baptism. By the time he was 12 years old, he had not even heard the word homosexual, but he knew what love meant. And by the time he was 12 years old, he knew that everyone had crushes on one another, and everyone wanted to love one another, and he just wanted to love another boy. But the day his pastor heard this, he just walked out of the room and closed the door behind him. And a week later he stood David at the pulpit and screamed that he were an agent of the devil. He was an agent of the devil. He was 12 years old! But from that day on his name was replaced with faggot. And for the next few years, the boys from his church took turns pissing and spitting on him. His parents didn’t even stop them.

But on his 15 birthday, he thought everything had changed.

His parents promised him a party. He could barely contain his excitement before he reached his house and saw the men that had to drag him from his home kicking and screaming to the camps. His parents just signed him over and watched. They thought he was broken. And if not, they thought they could break him. And, David, I wish you did not have to hear the music of another arm band, piping the pink triangle through constant sermons over the speakers of your windowless room. And I wish the door of that box they called a room opened more then three times a week. They tried to make weak by subjecting you to torture. You thought you would die there. As if you were not already dead, ghost shaking the bars of your rib cage, trying to break free. But death was a friendly visitor. At least once a week, another camper was missing, and at least once a week he was forgotten.

And, David, how much did it holocaust you to be beaten by exorcists until you vomited blood like the Red Sea, across church floors?

How much did it holocaust you when they beat you until 3 ribs broke?

At least by then you could leave.

But you had not been fixed, so your parents didn’t want you home. Home. Home-osexuals rarely have a place in this world. Sodomy laws are still in effect in 70 countries around the globe, forcing gay men to live in seclusion. They still call them sodomy laws. As if its all about sex and not about love.

But when David was 25 years old, he played a love song on Tucker Russel’s forehead and showed him what god was. He had kept his faith through the pain, and Tucker hid within his until he saw Jesus in David’s eyes the first time they first met. They talked for hours in that book shop until the store closed like pages of a life. Tucker had once been told that gays could not marry because they could not even love. But on July 26, David got down on one knee and made Tucker cry so hard, they thought forests would grow at his feet.

But no more than 2 months later, David was attacked. He did not even have time to bible cover his face before the bat came down. He had only tried to show them that he was nothing to be afraid of, but they followed him and beat him down. He did not even believe in fighting back. He believed in loving back, he believed in living back, so remember back, David, to when you were twelve years old and did not even know what homosexual meant. That was bliss compared to this.

You struggled until you died exactly 2 months later, in a hospital bed. Tucker held you in his arms, and prayed until your last breath escaped your lips like gunshot.

And we all still the gunshot, when we hear Baptists preachers in the south screaming to burn fags not flags. And when Granddaddy Phelps beats us with the Bible belt once again.

And we still hear the gun shot, every time a sexist pig beats up another gay man in the street and beats off to another lesbian in porn.

And we still hear the gun shot.

Fortunately, your attackers will spend the rest of their lives in cages. But you were lucky the law was even on your side. Some people cannot even sue. Sue. Suicide still haunts the minds of at least 38 percent of GLBT youth. So cut straight into your wrists like bible verses, like the only way you can take control of your life again is to cut veins like marionette strings and free fall into love.

Tucker still misses you. He can barely keep from crying every time we speak your name. He’s a pastor now at two different churches and everyone loves him. He says I remind him of you, sometimes, and hence of Christ, and I don’t know why.

And I’m sorry David.

I’m sorry that you had to be another beaten heart, another maimed lover, blood scattered across the concrete like shrapnel, bones broken like shrapnel.

But somewhere, over the rainbow, there is a 12 year old boy. His name is David. He has blond hair, a humor like the Three Stooges, and does not yet know what homosexual means, but he knows the word love.

After presenting this poem to at CSU Monterey Bay, a first-year student raised his hand and said, “I think David Patterson’s story should be heard just as much as Matthew Shepard’s story.” What struck me, was that, within the entire poem, I had only said David’s full name once. The experience had resonated so strongly with this student, that he held that name with him. Let us hold every broken name. Let us hear every story cut short.