Poetry Is Gay

The school district where I teach is pretty resistant to homosexuality. One of the stipulations of my contract is that if anyone is to bring up the subject with me, I am allowed to define that is the physical attraction between people of the same sex, as well as remind them that the exact causes of homosexuality are still unknown. If the student is "still curious" about the topic, I am to tell them to direct further questions to their parents or spiritual adviser. You know, "Hey kid, go ask your priest about being gay!" Talk about irresponsible.

Contract or not, I would never abide by these rules were I to be faced with a student looking for guidance. Such an issue has never arisen, however, which comes as no surprise considering the community's overwhelming bigotry toward homosexuality. If your parents would disown you, you're not going to chance having others find out you might consider yourself anything less than 100% heterosexual.

My students, like most teenagers, bandy about the term "gay" to mean something is stupid or bad. Though I reprimand them, I know I did the same thing at their age. They take it many steps further, however, by openly expressing their hatred toward "fags" and how it's gross. Despite their animosity, I have one period that is particularly homoerotic. I could never express this thought verbally without many protests and perhaps even a call for my resignation, but so many of the males in that class are more into each other than they would ever admit. They flex for each other, they rub each others' backs, they have competitions where the lift their shirts to see who has the best abs. To see them check each other out and then later talk about how homosexuality is a sin is quite a trip. It'd be one thing if they were comfortable with their sexuality, but clearly they are not.

I have students who have outright refused to participate in the poetry unit because they consider it gay. They would rather receiving zeroes than have anyone perceive them to be homosexual for reading poetry. Obviously, this stubbornness is both excessive and ridiculous, and I tell them so to no avail. One assignment called for my students to write a poem using an example of figurative language (simile/metaphor/personification). Three papers that I received said little more than "poetry is gay," yet I begrudgingly feel obligated to give them partial credit as it is an example of personification.

Fortunately, I do have two students in that homoerotic class who break the mold and are pretty progressive in their thinking. They like to challenge the norm in their appearance and actions, going as far to writing their figurative language poems to each other as a "fuck you" to their peers' bullshit.

Here are the poems they read aloud to each other, vegan and carnivore. The names have been changed and "stooooppe" apparently means stupid:

darren, darren, darren
oh my wonderful darren
you are so not stooopppe
you are like wonderful breeding penguins
Youre abbs are hypnotising
My only wish is that you're always safe
life without you is not life at all.
But in the end you are just a side of beef
with terraki sauce
---------------------------
Joel, Joel, Joel
O My Wonderful Joel
you are so not stoooppee.
you are like wonderful breeding penguins.
Your a skinny vegan with a mop head
My only wish is that your never dead.
Life without you would be stooopppe.
Man I love my sautayed tofu of a friend with a side
of 1,000 island dressing.

 
Disappointingly, the class reacted poorly. Heckles of "eww" and "fag" were prevalent. Psshh, they're too ignorant to recognize that the abbs (sic) reference was a shot at their own homoerotic competitions or notice that the simile about "wonderful breeding penguins" might be the most beautiful, hilarious comparison made in recent times. Poetry isn't gay by definition, but perhaps it should be.