REDEMPTION

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Response to Robert Frost’s
“NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY”

By Dapharoah69

Man’s second sense for lust
His thinking: southward
The forbidden fruit symbolizes Alpha and Omega
The punishment for Eve’s split second decision
Blindness succumb to the flaming scimitar
In destruction...nothing Gold can Stay
The sun rises on the newborn
The sun sets on shadows hovering over the grave.

My name’s Harry...

I live with HIV. Had it since I was twenty-five. My daddy bashed me for it, saying that I got it by allowing all sorts of men to run up inside me like free helium at a wet balloon party, but to put all of us with HIV in the same bracket was sheer lunacy. I didn’t get it by being promiscuous. I got it from a three year relationship with a man I was in love with that likes to pull rubbers off in the dark.

We aren’t all so lucky, but we do learn, take accountability and move on. There are those that take it seriously, and those that don’t. And I wasn’t close to my mother. Being that my childhood was so crazy, I have always envied people who came from stable backgrounds. It even hurt me in relationships. I could not relate to people who came from those types of homes, with both parents, responsible lives, close-knit family ties with cousins, uncles, etc.

First, Mama had me believing in the tooth fairy. Then she swore up the filthy Flint River that the Easter bunny laid eggs. Then Santa Claus. I knew Santa was a lie ever since I was five years old because there were no white folks in Goulds, Florida (my neighborhood) at the time nor did we have chimney’s his fat ass could slide down. Didn’t even snow there. Never saw snow in real life outside of all the quirky holiday movies that gave me acid reflux and a migraine that resorted in me drinking a V8. The equator damn near ran slap through Miami, so we always had barbeques on the beach for Christmas because it was so damn hot.

Yet after all the programming, conditioning and mythical lies...you told me I was going to hell when I started snubbing potty-mouthed females and took a liking to men. Now you shove Jesus down my throat...

After lying about fairies, Santa and Easter bunnies, what makes you think I give a shit about your religious views when religion was a safe haven for the devil...?

Mother and I had a huge blow out. For as long as I can remember she has been bothering me about grandkids and I wasn’t ready to have little snot bearers. Kids shit and piss like dogs, and I hadn’t that kind of time for women, child support threats or being tied to a woman forever via kids.

So I passed.

I quietly resisted mom’s pressurized bullshit, that was until she caught me kissing Brad Pitt’s picture on a magazine cover shortly after starting college and she threw me out on the street, with nowhere to go.

Daddy had another family in Germany. He cut us off years ago. Divorced Mama via telegram, married German pussy and told us, “Deuces.”

So her bitterness spilt into my invisible lVehemently, she called everybody in our generation of people and bashed me, making up lies...

It’d gone from kissing Brad to she caught me giving head to my friends and I’d never done such a thing at the time, didn’t even know what “giving head” was.

I was so frustrated.

Then there came those hypocrite ass Pastors. One in particular. The Sheepherder of mom’s ultra insensitive church of recovering crackheads and downlow booty bandits.

When he tried to do some weird gay exorcism at my grandma’s house, I threw a pot of hot grits on his ass and told him to stay the fuck away from me. Yes, I loved God, whom I refer to as Yahweh, but I wasn’t pushing my views on the next person and I would appreciate if the same courtesy was extended to me.

Presently, I looked down at my Journal. Yes, I was homeless, living in my Mazda hatchback. I jotted down my thoughts...:

If anyone failed me, it was my mother. Feeding me peaches about life through rose-colored glasses, knowing those roses smelled like shit. I never cared about church, so who gave a shit about their point of view? The church only gave a fuck about your tithes. They weren’t gladiators or protectors. Tax free money.

Mama was in too deep. Inviting those rats, demons and snakes into our home since I was very young. She single-handedly opened the door that led to me being abused by the very church folk that damned me to hell when I became an adult.

THERE IS JUST AS MUCH EVIL (IF NOT MORE/less) IN THE CHURCH AS THERE IS OUTSIDE ON THE STREETS.

Study the bloody history of the Vatican and the Roman church, and great spiritual men like John Huss, whom they burned at the stake when he wouldn’t denounce God...

Some folk fail to realize that the REAL church is your BODY, your temple, not a building where false prophets gather, meet, screw each other and talk about everyone that walks through the door, but smile in your face when its tithing time. Secondly they fail to realize that the OLD COVENANT is over, the NEW COVENANT is in effect. The OLD ORDER, where God’s punishment was immediate, is over. Now you have to pray to Him through Jesus name, if not He doesn’t even hear your cry.

Some people eat shrimp, pork and swine (abominations as well) but focus on homosexuality smh, third NO ONE determines who goes to heaven or hell but God, fourth, God didn’t say you had to go to church to make it to heaven.

He ENCOURAGES fellowship, but is NOT a requirement. All you have to do is believe in the blood of Christ, His son, to make it there and repent of your sins.

We’re ALL sinners, even tight-coochie nuns. NO ONE IS GOOD. And lastly Jesus never condemned ANYONE, He loved ALL his children, not SOME of them. Pastors are so quick to say What would Jesus do, um He wouldn’t degrade anyone, He wouldn’t have whores for Pastors, most of which are in the closet homos, ex crack heads, ex pimps and dope boys, some are atheists doing the wear-the-robe thing for profit, for your ten percent...for his new Cadillac.

GOD IS LOVE. Love knows no wrong, it doesn’t carry grudges, it doesn’t judge. Some people don’t know what the hell they are talking about.

Three years later...

Dear Marcus Johnson,

It doesn’t matter about stereotypes in your life when it comes to love. I’m HIV positive and my husband of 8 years is HIV negative. He’s plus sized and wasn’t my type. I met him two weeks after I stopped looking for love. He wanted company for his birthday and I was a broken man that secretly gave up on writing with thoughts of suicide. Top after top broke my heart when I thought a man with abs was my “type.” But we became friends and I fell in love with him. I’m his first relationship, ever. We’re best friends and two bottoms that decided to live on OUR TERMS. He didn’t care that I was an award winning author and I didn’t care about his weight. We’re totally opposite of each other. We argue, fuss, disagree, love, grow, all that together. His heart and compassion hooked me. I told him of my affliction when we met. As a registered nurse for ten years he didn’t care. As a result this is what love looks like when you stop letting stereotypes run your decision process. A man that’s “Your type,” may NOT BE who you spend the rest of your life with. We last because, no matter what we do, we keep friends, family AND social media OUT of our personal business.

Sealing the letter in a pink envelope, I wrote “Marcus Johnson” in the middle of the envelope with calligraphy script and dropped it in a wicker basket over on a draped table by the exit door of the class I taught on Saturdays. Anger management. I didn’t know why I taught this damn class when I had anger issues myself, but I enjoyed helping others because it was therapeutic. Plus I owned my own practice.

It was a great way to put my degree in psychology to great use, since I had trouble finding a career after graduating from Howard University ten years ago.

Today’s lesson to my class, a group of sixty individuals from diverse lifestyles and backgrounds (one hundred and twenty dollars a week), was to write a letter to someone in the class about an issue they rarely discuss with anyone, seal it in an envelope with their name on it and drop it in the wicker basket. Once you comply, you sign a clipboard with just the name of the person on the letter so that others took a look to see what names were available. The idea of the exercise was to anonymously respond to the letter with an answer to what you read. How you felt about what you read was your business. The idea was to express your feelings without anger. Great rhetoric was key in living a successful life free of bias. One should be able to express their differences in a productive manner that didn’t jeopardize the livelihood of others.

It was a fun exercise that would teach people how to be open and honest without being judgmental and condescending.

Writing about my relationship with my husband wasn’t something I’ve ever done, but I didn’t ask my students to do anything that I wasn’t willing to do myself.

I wrote Marcus because a) he was cute (yes, even my husband agreed that he was drop dead gorgeous), and b) he was a down low gay man with issues about coming out because he thought that all gay men were feminine, messy and filled with drama and my husband and I weren’t any of those stereotypes.

I wanted to show him that being who you are wasn’t a curse or a demon of its own design. It was a beautiful, fulfilling thing that brought out the best in everything around you except the bigots.