Inner Cissy Blues Cissy boy, princess in disguise, playing straight to hide from the hate. He’s dying inside. So wise but wasting away, skin and bone thin from the lies he been fed that his love be sin. Poor little cissy boy, singing the inner cissy blues. His joys are strange, his affections are afflictions, infectious predilections that should be contagious, more dangerous than boys addicted to violence who punch him to silence with: “Don’t live that, should’nt be that, can’t be that, Straight is right, hate’ll be the game if don’t give up your fight. Cissy boy you got it wrong. No-one wants to hear your song” Said the teachers and preachersand the neighbours, and the parents, anti-depressants, the dictators, the men’s magazines, the friends in the canteen and every classroom, cinema, cloakroom, curricula; the same thing: “Play dead cissy, keep it out of sight, leave it unsaid. Choose right - keep them blues inside. Hide that smile, butch up ya gait. Abidigate your right to have your own say. “Leave those inner cissy blues unsung.” Then his clothes started saying it, room started smelling of it, bathtime bedtime toys started yelling it. Claustrophobic - the itch was in his bones, sewn on his skin, word stitched in spit like a homophobic sting on the daily news. Das when the Inner cissy blues begun. The blues in his lungs, hate blue inked under his tiny little feet, under a tongue that might break from the weight of walking straight down that straight straight street. His inner cissy blues unsung. “Don’t live that, should’nt be that, can’t be that, Straight is right, hate’ll be the game if don’t give up your fight. Cissy boy you got it wrong. No-one wants to hear your song” Said the teachers and preachersand the neighbours, and the parents, anti-depressants, the dictators, the men’s magazines, the friends in the canteen and every classroom, cinema, cloakroom, curricula; the same thing: “Play dead cissy, keep it out of sight, leave it unsaid. Choose right - keep them blues inside. Hide that smile, butch up ya gait. Abidigate your right to have your own say. “Leave those inner cissy blues unsung.” So he put his inner cissy in a 9 – story tower far far away, so no-one would feel his power, his brightness, his loco, the gloriously gay grace of his coco-symphonic face, his queer song – the harmonically righteous wrong of what he wanted to say, the cacophony of his black and blue melody. The truth that there weren’t no prince coming along, no heir to some white crown to mince up the long blond hair that weren’t his to let down. Just an afro growing out, flowing round, till it filled the room with frizz. Choking in the boom of his mix-race microphone; smokin’ gay fro with no-space to grow. ‘Till the strength of his curl broke the walls to that world and the extent of his feelings smote the ceiling. Tower crashed down on his head like a shower of dead straight hate smashed rich white names, nouns and he knew that his gayfro was his unseen crown. He looked up into the sky and he sang like a queen. Free. Brown. Crown of curls. Smile as big as the world. Inner Cissy be free, to be seen, You aint no princess, boy, you a queen. So reign. Free. Brown. Crown of curls Smile as big as the world.