FDA Blood Ban

I tried to give blood today
And failed
For some reason the blood just wouldn’t flow
Just wouldn’t give in to your needle
I tried to give blood today and failed

You see, I tried to give blood today and failed
Because there are laws inscribed around my veins
There are laws inscribed around my veins
Freaking titanium plates covering my bones
That say they protect me from myself

I am freakin’ wolverine with these laws around my veins
Ch-ching, Ch-ching prepare to be invigorated
You know why I tried to give blood and failed
Because the FDA says it doesn’t want my blood
That’s right
The FDA said no to me today

But you know what, I’m used to it, the FDA, the medical institution, has been saying no to me for 25 years now
No you may not publicize this epidemic
No you may not treat this disease
No you may not have this drug
Or that
Or that
No you may not save lives with drugs that don’t make us a shitload of money
No you may not expand the market
No we don’t give a damn

But for 25 years the FDA has been saying no to me directly
No, Jason Stewart Sierra
We don’t want your blood
We can’t take your blood

They no longer ask me
Psychiatric fitness style
Joe McCarthy style
Police brutality style
Downsizing, landletting, get your ass out of my shop and onto the streets style
What I like to do in bed
But they ask me on a form
They ask me if I sleep with men
If I’ve ever slept with men
And if I say yes
If I mark yes on a form
They deny my donation

You see, I tried to give blood today and failed
Tried to perform a civic duty to America’s more than 5,000 hospitals
Tried to do you a public service cuz you’re scared of needles
And failed
Because the government does not want me to serve you
I tried to be an American citizen, a human citizen today and was told my blood was bad

But my blood is not bad
I don’t have bad blood coursing through these veins
My blood is strong and unadulterated
I know my blood red and blue,
My white count still high, I know what I’ve got and what I haven’t
In fact
Truth be told I’ve probable been tested more than you ever will
I’ve been tested more often than any of my straight friends who are getting more play than a tonka truck
I am getting tested more often than my prostitute friends
Because I live in a culture where we test, where people are unafraid to go to Vaden
Get the test and move on with their lives
Because I use a condom every freakin’ time and don’t think birth control is germicide

But the FDA still says no
Not good enough
Your blood is bad
Don’t care what your record shows
Monogamy or one hook up
Ten years past

Sure we test it anyway
But still, not good enough
Your blood is bad and we refuse to accept it

Let me say it simple
There is bad blood between me and that bloodbank
And its not mine
It’s a history of bad blood that refuses to forgive
Refuses to realize that one in ten in one in ten is all that carries
We are not all carriers of HIV even though your culture tells us we are
We are public, too
With rights, too
Human, too
Citizens, too
And we deserve to exercise our rights
Gay marriage, don’t ask, don’t tell are not the only fronts of our oppression
Even here on campus, at Stanford University in the Bay Area of California
This is not a gay rights speech
This is a human treatment speech
When you call my blood bad without knowledge
Call my blood bad without time
Call my blood bad without asking
You deny my citizenship
Deny my civic duty
Deny my humanity.

I see this blood bank
And am not reminded of my commitment to public service
But of that denial
And the fact that no one knows.
That you didn’t know that
The FDA prohibits all men who have ever had sex with other men from giving blood
Puts bad blood between us, too
The fact that you forgive them for putting it on a form
Nod along silently when they ask you
And don’t speak against an unfair assumption based on cultural sterotypes
Puts bad blood in my veins in your eyes
And bad blood in your gaze
I shouldn’t have to lie, or hide, or pass or cover
To perform my civic duty
And you shouldn’t let this blood pass between us without asking the questions of our common humanity.
Why are they asking?
Why does it matter when they test anyway?
Why does it matter who I sleep with if I’m careful, if I’m tested, if heterosex is carrying too?
Why is no one talking.
Yes, donate blood because we can’t.
Give twice even…once for me.
But don’t let this struggle for equality of rights and responsibilities go unheeded
I shouldn’t have to lie on that form to donate blood
Tell your friends, your congressman, your mother and your grandma that things still aren’t right even here.
Give blood today because we can’t
Give them an earful because our voices are not enough.

Gender Mirror

The other night when we were alone, dark haired beautiful girl,
You and I, slender faced beautiful woman
On your bed, timid, cautious, gentle beautiful girl
In your room
I held you until you cried
I don’t know if you cried because you knew you were safe
Or because you never realized you had been before
I held you because I needed to feel safe
I often forget that these arms with which I hold you are the arms of a man, a male, xy recessive
There is something in me instinctively so
But acculturation has erased the cultural aberration of modern masculinity
I’ve been dis-acculturated from the valences of paternalism
The fag flag rubbing clear the marks of maleness upon my consciousness
Supposedly resolving me, absolving me of gender-biases
But lying with you, I know myself male
And not simply male as when you are male
But male to your femaleness
My back to you read as rejection, yours to me as invitation
I hold you
I feel in my arms the cultural weight and duty of the protector, desiring to make you safe and knowing in your safety to find my own
Where boys do not know the path to emotional openness they follow your footsteps and slip through the gate behind
There is openness in these fields for both shepherd and sheep
Do not let me lose sight of you for then am I lost, too
But in this moment
Lying beside you, silent, breathing into the nape of your neck, your hair sweet on the pillow my hands rough filling the concavity of your side
I know myself darker
When you are man you have right to my body as I to yours
When you are man there is familiarity to these lines, this softness, that forgetfulness
When you are man I reflect myself into you with ease and look to please myself
But in this body there is disfamiliarity
I exoticize because I do not know
Your heart between my arms is lost behind softness unfamiliar your hips giving way to constellations in skies I’ve not seen
I don’t know what it means to feel you there
I don’t know what it means to breathe
And in the not-knowing search for pleasure there is only my own
And I seek to fill it in you
My hands upon your body, exploring
There is landfall, discovery and inherent ownership
This is not childhood adventuring but conquest
The height of each tip flying flags
The curves nestling settlements of safety returned
My hands deep within you, I find myself home
There is space in you to give first right of betrothal
I am your manor keeper
It is not you that I dispossess
Lying beside you I suddenly know why men rape

There is privilege in these hands that takes offense at your disfamiliarity
I don’t care to be
Destabilized, de-situated, discombobulated
I’d rather be at home
But there is in you that draws me to you
And it is not this desire to possess
But beside you I’m beside myself and yet that self is unknown so I destroy it
I only want you because you transmit light
I only possess you because you don’t let me see
There is opacity in your translucence unabsolvable
Dissoluble I resolve you through utterance
You are nothing, just possession, only was fun, now forget it

But adoringly you hold up fingers before me, only twice before

And I know myself male
Dropped to wooden floor
I cannot forgive myself the mirror you are
Mirror of cultural models, acculturated definitions
The mirror of gender interaction is distortion
In confusion I reach for you
But in reaching I am beating
And in beating you are bleeding
Shards spread around broken bits emitting light and I piece it back together
Mirror of gender now absolving I forget it
I am not it, and you are still beautiful

My hands are rough in your dark hair but rougher still are your feet and your nails
Dark arms wrapped into dark arms
There is hair on your arms that I cannot speak of
And experience in your voice that I can’t reflect
But not woman I hold you
But spirit I breathe you
And flesh I desire you
Your foreignness my reflection
There are mirrors in eyes that beg I remember
My pleasure without you
Your pleasure within me

You are woman convexity
I male concavity
You are woman concavity
I male convexity
There are places we were not meant to fit and in the space between there is possibility