Three Sonnets on Being Whitenessingly
by John Kendall Hawkins
for DJ
I.
The unbearable whiteness of being
white weighs on me tortures me day and night --
a self-loathing fat f*ck Orpheus light,
the ex I stiffed pillar of salt fleeing
to Sister Ophelia's nunnery
seeking sinless blank canvassed nothingness,
while I'm on the lam from wolves. I confess
a fond white need for constant punnery,
and when the poltergeists arrive to chew
me out of my mind, like dead Eliot
madmen geraniums shaking my view,
I'm Hamlet the white king and his zealot.
I cry to see what the mourning will bring,
self-lynching; it's an existential thing.
II.
She waltzed in liebfraumilch smile bosom high --
she sang Prost! I heard Proust and then she pressed
her spiggage against my face I undressed
her in my mind, my tongue climbing her thigh,
and thought fondly of our purity laws,
blau augen blond haar oompah in mein Herz,
arse white as the driven Schnee, to be terse,
Himmel high, until she removed my paws.
Turns out she was working undercover
and the cops had need of her baddabooms:
she was looking for zwei Dummkopfen toons
to ausnehmen, not some tuba lover.
But when no Peter Lorre showed that night,
I snaked her garden of earthly delight.
III.
The unbearableness of being white
in a black world all the hype too much bleach
too many cycles no soul gonads tight
the meaning of the Coltrane honk and screech
eludes me no color tabla rasa
crystalline snow hung out to dry -- in spite
white picket fence smiles guard blanco casa
sleep sheeple downhill skiing white on white.
The burden of being white means being right,
hero of the master-slave narrative,
the one you look to for knowing insight
and old ideas needing a palliative.
I'd not stop being white for anything
or anyone or any cause: I'm king.
(Article changed on January 14, 2021 at 07:23)
