achilles

“I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to those who have a better knowledge of man. The adult who has learned to translate a part of his feelings into thoughts notices the absence of these thoughts in a child, and therefore comes to believe that the child lacks these experiences, too. Yet rarely in my life have I felt and suffered as deeply as at that time.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Some Men Have Vaginas

He said he was a gay man
with a vagina and I, penis heavy
and light of foot, wondered
if gay meant the same to him
as it did to me, wondered
if man was in mind or body.
Because I wear my man,
strip down bare to my man.
In the mirror, there, I am.
For me, man has merely been
a matter of circumstance,
not a journey or discovery.
I rarely had to fight for it,
rarely want to fight against it,
never wanted to shed skin
to reveal somebody else.
I never questioned it until
he said, "Some men have vaginas."
I understood it to be true
but it left me feeling nothing
more than a tool, who knew
nothing about being a man
outside his own body.”
― Dean Atta, The Black Flamingo

“I imagine us in Eden—
two black boys in Paradise,
naked, no fig leaves.
Adam and Eve are long gone,
so Kieran and Michael
inherit the garden
and the serpent is forgotten
and the fruit on the tree of knowledge
has gone rotten”
― Dean Atta, The Black Flamingo

“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend