I’m not Pasolini asking for explanations

I’m not Ginsberg expelled from Cuba

I’m not a fag disguised as poet

I don’t need a disguise

Here is my face

I speak for my difference

I defend what I am

And I’m not so strange

Injustice stinks

And I suspect this democratic dance

But don’t speak to me of the proletariat

Because to be poor and queer is worse

One must be tough to withstand it

It is to avoid the machitos on the streetcorner

It is a father that hates you

Because his son is a queen

It is to have a mother whose hands are slashed by bleach

Aged from cleaning

Cradling you as if you were ill

Because of bad habits

Because of bad luck

Like the dictatorship

Worse than the dictatorship

Because the dictatorship ends

And democracy comes

And right behind it socialism

 And then what?

What will you do to us, compañero?

Will you tie us into bails by our braids, destined to arrive in some AIDS-ridden

        quarter of Cuba?

Put us on some train to nowhere

Like general Ibáñez’s ship

Where we learnt to swim

Although no one reached the shore

That is why Valparaiso turned off its red lamps

That is why the whorehouses

Offered a black teardrop

To the queens that had been eaten by lobsters

In that year that the Human Rights Commission doesn’t remember

That’s why, compañero, I ask you

Does the Siberian train of reactionary propaganda still exist?

That train that passes across your eyes

When my voice becomes too sweet

And you?

What will you do with those memories of us as children wanking each other,

        amongst other things, on holiday in Cartagena?

Will the future be black and white?

Day and night, without ambiguity?

Won’t there be a fag on some street-corner, destabilising the future of your new man?

Will you let us embroider birds onto the flag of the free fatherland?

I will leave the rifle for you

The coldblooded one

And it’s not that I’m afraid

The fear wore away

Used to blocking knives

In the sexual underground where I used to be

And don’t feel offended

If I speak to you of these things

And look at your package

I am not a hypocrite

Don’t a woman’s tits make you lower your eyes?

Don’t you think that, all alone, up in the ranges, we might have gotten up to something?

Although you would hate me later

For corrupting your revolutionary morality

Are you afraid of life becoming homosexual?

And I’m not talking about putting in and taking it out

And only taking it out and putting it back in

I’m talking about tenderness, compañero

You don’t know

How hard it is to find love

Under these conditions

You don’t know

What it is to deal with this leprosy

People keep their distance

People understand and say:

He’s a fag, but he writes well

He’s a fag, but a good friend

Really-cool

I’m not cool

I accept the world

Without asking for coolness

But they laugh anyway

I have scars on my back from being laughed at

You think that I think with my ass

And that with the first electro-shock from the CNI

I was going to spill it out

Don’t you know that my manhood

Wasn’t learnt in the barracks

My manhood was taught to me by the night

Behind a street-post

That manhood that you boast about

Was stuffed into you at the regiment

A military killer

Like those that are still in power

My manhood wasn’t given to me by the party

Because they rejected me with laughter

Many times

I learnt my manhood by participating

In the toughness of those times

And they laughed at my fag voice

Yelling: ‘And it will fall, and it will fall’

And although you yell like a man

You haven’t been able to make him leave

My manhood was the gag

It wasn’t going to the stadium

And starting a fight for Colo Colo

Football is another hidden homosexuality

Like boxing, politics and wine

My manhood was to bear the mockery

Eating rage in order to not kill everyone

My manhood is to accept myself as different

To be a coward is much harder

I don’t turn the other cheek

Instead I present my ass, compañero

And that is my vengeance

My manhood waits patiently

For the machos to get old

Because at this stage of the game

The left sells its flaccid ass

In the parliament

My manhood was difficult

That’s why I’m not getting onto this train

Without knowing where it will go

I will not change for Marxism

That rejected me so many times

I don’t need to change

I am more subversive than you

I will not change

Because of the rich and the poor

Try that on somebody else

Nor will I change because Capitalism is unjust

In New York, fags kiss on the street

But I’ll leave that to you

Who is so interested

The revolution must not rot entirely

I’m giving this message to you

And it’s not because of me

I am old

And your utopia is for future generations

There are so many children that will be born

With a broken wing

And I want them to fly, compañero

And that your revolution

Gives them a red piece of the heavens

So that they might fly



 In the original, Lemebel uses cueca, which is the Chilean national dance and is also a genre of folk music. ↩
 Lemebel uses here the diminuitive suffix -ito, implying that he is shrinking machos,> into little-machos. ↩
 A reference to the concept New Man articulated by the socialist movements of the 20th century.

The New Man is, in very general terms, the citizen that is formed as a result of the socialist milieu,

shaped by the values and ideas of socialism. ↩
 ‘Y va a caer, y va a caer, la dictadura va a caer’ – a popular protest chant, sung at protests against the military regime. ↩
 A popular Chilean football team named after a historic Mapuche leader. ↩