We Were Seeds

Found poem from trans rights protest and counter-protest on College Green, Bristol, Saturdays 19^th & 26^th April 2025. The counter protest was quickly drowned out.
I.

God created man and woman —
Let us piss in peace!

Only a man and a woman —
We are eternal.

A child needs a mother and a father —
I am alive because of her.

It’s in the Bible —
Isolation is death.

You can’t change biology —
Fuck you. I’m going to live.

There are only two genders—
My pronouns are he/hit because trans people are a hit, motherfuckers!

Repent.
We are building a movement.

Repent.
We exist.

Repent.
You are not invisible.

II.

Repent.

We will not be granted our liberation
from the state, from the courts, from parliament.
We will win it —
by fighting,
by resisting,
by disrupting.

Repent.

We are scared.
We are fucking angry!
We are tired —
we’re still here.

—pent.

Let out your joy – they hate it.

We drive the Tranny Joy Mobile.
We build community,

carry each other along.

—

They have been burying us,
not realising
we were seeds
of revolution.

III.

College Green in Spring.
There is glitter in the cracks
of the paving stones,
if not our faces.

We need to show those people there
the warmth of a stranger’s hand.
They want our blood
for some colour in their lives.
But we are already
the mural.
We are already
the riot.

Stonewall was a fucking riot.

There is no LGB
without the T.
There is no protest
without partying.

That billionaire smoking a cigar on a yacht,
she-who-must-not-be-named,
to celebrate our death,
when she is dust,
we will still be here.

We will not fight for scraps.
We are building
what we need
for what’s ahead.

Bristol is home.
This country can be a home

whenever we bring our bodies here.
We must stretch out this green
until it holds us all.

We do not ask permission
to belong.

We have always been here.
We bloom.

Tom Nutting is a writer and psychiatrist from Bristol, UK. He writes on queer ecologies, activism, and mental illness. His recently won the Lisa Thomas prize, and has been published in Magma, Blue Bottle Journal, BJPsych, The Hopper, The Ash.