Next Gen
We say nerd, make obscure pop culture references.
The audience smiles because they identify.
They laugh,
and sometimes we are not sure if it’s with us or at us.
The revolution already happened
and it was on every movie screen in the country
written in box office receipts.
It’s Big Bang theory, it’s Family Guy, it’s South Park,
it’s Adult Swim, it’s Cartoon Network.
But they never ask why.
Since humor is our greatest weapon,
the easiest defense mechanism,
we made jokes to preempt the ones made at our expense.
We were never comfortable here, in this world
maybe that’s why we spend so much of our lives in others.
For my part,
The Crow and Gwen Stacy are how I learned to process grief.
Peter Parker and Matt Murdock helped me cope with bullies.
Green Lantern taught me about the power of will,
how every emotion exists in its own wavelength of light
and has own power and consequences, kind of like life.
Strangers in Paradise taught me about love and friendship.
I spent a long time thinking I was David to someone’s Katchoo.
Spent even longer being the Katchoo to other people's Davids.
Didn't realize I was actually Francine,
I've been Francine this whole time.
I don’t really care if you get that last part
It was comic books that taught me to be more human.
But this is just my story and it’s been told before
Superheroes may give us something to aspire to,
but everything in our lives has become so
commercialized, compartmentalized and processed
that we are all mutants now.
We don’t like telling this story.
For some people the word nerd
became synonymous with white.
So being a nerd became trying to be white.
Or nerd became another code word for gay,
because it was better to say you were a nerd,
than it was to say you were gay.
They don’t like hearing this story.
So talk about how you like Star Trek again.
Make them laugh again.
Do a little dance, they like the dance.
Leave out the part about Uhura and Kirk
being first interracial kiss on television.
Forget Ton Stark’s alcoholism, Speedy’s drug addiction,
and don’t even mention lesbian Willow.
Don’t tell them we escape into fantasy worlds
because they still beat the shit out us in bathrooms
in the real world.
Tell them this is Next Generation
and we are all nerds now,
that this is a whole new kind of pride poem.
This is the remix of the original OG (Old Geek)
So hell yeah I am that nerd, these are the things I love,
and I don’t care if you get it.
This is no longer about being a nerd.
This is how we be human.