Disco Demolition

For Jason Tseng, Micah Bucey, and Gloria Gaynor.

In the 1970s, disco,
the child of soul, funk, and salsa,
was the most popular music in America.
Every nightclub pulsed with that four to the floor beat
from New York to Los Angeles,

And it was gay and brown and beautiful,
not in spite of
but because of these things.

When the White Sox blew up a crate
of disco records at Comiskey Park,
they weren’t trying to destroy a few pieces of vinyl,
they were trying to comfort regressive troglodytes.

The backlash against disco
wasn’t just the usual exhaustion
with a dead genre,
but fear of a black planet,
of a gay revolution,
of a Latin uprising.

The National Pastime
has always been slamming
a boot down on the neck
of somebody different.
But our lives were never a game
and rhythm has always been
in a league of its own.

So when fascists arrive
armed with bluster and bravado,
erect cocks barely disguised,
show them how bone dry palms
wrung out by self-hatred can’t hold
this sweat slick skin.

When they try to apprehend your beauty
show them what all this cardio was good for
and make your fabulous escape.

Show them why
we measure records
in revolutions per minute,
and their only choices
are thirty three
or forty five
not zero.

When the idiot astronomers of
social conservatism
try to convince you that
the universe revolves around them,
tell them that retrograde motion
is nothing but the illusion of a false perspective.

Our Earth always spun around this exquisite sun,
unafraid to be sequin and glitter.
This world only spins forward,
and our dream of
beatmatched brothers and sisters
moving from song to song
seamless
is the Truth.

So when fascists call your heart a crime scene,

dance.

When they bring cinderblocks
to build your body into a prison,

dance.

When they try to bludgeon you with their God,
tell them love
has always been the moral majority

and fucking dance.

And when this is all over,
and we’ve won
smile
and ask them:

Did you think we would crumble?
Did you think we would lay down and die?

No.

We survived.