People Tell Their Stories:
Coming Out: Gay/Lesbian Identity Issues

It's a Man's World  a poem by Jerry Terranova
 
1. The Men
Loud, angry, gruff.
Crude.
Afraid of them. Get out of their way.
Could blow his stack at any minute. Attack me, annihilate
me with one word.
He wants to control me, bury me.
They always get what they want.
Force.
They have all the power.
It's a man's world.
I'm not a man, so I guess it's not my world.
 
2. The Women
Quiet and Strong.
Endure in silence.
Accept.
Control from the inside.
Yield on the outside.
Smarter than the men.
Survival in man's world-"yes" them to death.
Walk around them.
Bury need, desire, opinion, self. Okay if you know who you
are; deadly if you don't.
Strange. Different. Really different. Not like anyone else.
Strange.
Buried.
Trapped.
Gagged.
Empty and unreal.
No one.
Not man, not woman.
Can't give it a name.
Can't tell you what I want.
Can't tell you who I am.
 
4. Down and Dirty
Dark down here. And cold. And lonely.
Walls around the hurt.
Box it in.
Afraid all the time.
Something always wrong with me.
Can't let them see it.
Black marks on my soul
only a cross can erase.
The parent. The priest. The teacher,
follow the rules
stay inside the lines.
Me, still nowhere to be found.
 
5. A Rite of Passage
She knocked on my door.
She, with so much he inside her,
she, as black as the darkness inside my room,
knocked on my door,
identified me, gave me a name.
She said, "Are you?"
I said a simple yes
and flung the door open.
Told them all
yes, this is who I am.
Okay to want,
dicks and balls okay.
I want. I am awake. I am alive.
But inside
three fourths of me
still hid,
nameless,
still stalking me.
 
6. A Kind of Normalcy
Set up house
me, the man,
loud, angry, gruff.
Desire unleashed--conquest,
control what i cannot possess.
Love in a box.
The girl in me,
still can't surrender to her.
Hide behind control
till i meet the one i can't control
who brings me out to the edge.
 
7. Enter hiv
Shame gets a new name.
Driven back down, go deeper
my real date with the darkness begins.
Desire thwarted again,
this time on the edge,
life and death.
Desire blocked, life blocked.
Tired, tired, tired.
Tired of hiding, pretending,
tired of playing the placating game
belonging nowhere
no where inside
so no place in the world.
Stripped bare,
forced out of hiding
forced to choose
who I am.
I know who i am now.
Found it in the darkness
hiv, the torch.
I'm brought to myself at long last.
 
8. Power
Still a man in between me and what i want
telling me what's so,
telling me who i am,
who i am to be,
what's to become of me.
I want what the men have.
Freedom in the world
to reshape the world in my own image.
To claim my place.
Talk back,
set the terms,
take no guff.
Do.
Act.
Make it work.
Life takes balls.
Where to start?
Desire.
Basic Equipment.
Will.
Will to Live,
to master,
to conquer.
Desire = Life.
Follow rules
or die,
they say.
I say,
break rules and live.
Alive for once.
Me, my way.
 
9. Re-entry
New thrust of desire.
Assert.
New life being seeded.
Once robbed of the masculine,
estranged from the feminine,
now fight to be a man,
love to be a woman.
Male and female-
interwoven
reborn, renewed, renamed.
Taking the lid off.
Passion and poise.
Anger and grace.
Shame no more,
nothing left to lose.
10. Can Do Now
Activate desire.
Ask for what you want.
Be bold ask big.
Claim your place in the world.
What you want is good.
Who you are is good.
No more loss.
No more pain.
We will have what we want.
Health, first, basic, birthright,
building new life up from there.
Desire,
a gift handed down to us,
so that we can use it
to reach upward
from whence the gift came.
 

Jerry Terranova is a long-term aids survivor, writer and teacher, who died in June 1998. We remember and honor you, Jerry, for your love, wisdom, courage, generosity, and deep, passionate caring.
 
From Praxis,. Volume 2, Fall 1992 ©Jerry Terranova 1992. Reprinted by permission of Jerry Terranova.

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