Marsha P. Johnson State Park
Marsha's Poem - Soul
Marsha P. Johnson was a member of the avant garde theater troupe, The Hot Peaches from 1972-1991. Her performance of the poem Soul, by the troupe’s founder, Jimmy Camicia, was a crowd favorite, including in the 1988 production of The Heat, a Hot Peaches retrospective.
Soul, as performed in The Heat Courtesy of the Hot Peaches Archive, New York University Special Collections, Special thanks to Jimmy Camicia
Soul
You can count your karma
If Nirvana is your goal
you can shake and you can rattle
you can rock and roll
you can be a Clark Kent
or a Lois
or an Alice down a hole,
you can be a vampire on a mountain
With a heart of stone black coal.
You can be a leather angel.
On a sleek black Harley bike.
Or a redhead screaming f*ggot or a dazzling d*ke
you can lock yourself in a closet
in a fine mink stole
but ir really doesn’t matter
if you ain’t got soul.
Written by Jimmy Camicia