Is that all it takes? Mark my mouth,
slap me across the face, for desires
I dare to channel, I am so close
to blowing it, when you just want me
to blow as many as I can for good show
I only have one. You know how that adds up.
Man, what would I do for a sleepover!
People tell me they like to cuddle, but do they know
how much it costs to manage insomnia masked as
something I’d rather not mention here. Mystery, right?
well then should it be a smoke, a beer, or a bad decision
new orleans is the only place where queers walk and walk and walk and sometimes talk until after and beyond every midnight until some kind of magic happens
I praise O’Hara too.
You’d expect that, wouldn’t you?
Instead I watched a movie, with friends, about the puerile potential of my humanity. How the only thing we have to combat the darkness is a city of neon.
an occasion
to rise, then
forget it, you
kept me
up all night
and now
I’m ready.
Dylan Thomas, “To Others than You”
When I walked by a child
in the suburban supermarket
I caught a glimpse of her hand
tugging her mother’s coat
She called me a vampire
but I wanted to tell her
I am a son of a mother
who jokes about becoming
a vampire every time
she has her monthly blood transfusion
I stopped believing in monsters
when modern medicine
hacked solution after solution
It takes twenty years
to notice its flaws
The body always an organism
begging for equilibrium
I guess I should tell the girl
in the supermarket
that nothing is final
until you’re dead
How would I collect loss? Like rainwater on a rooftop?
I’ve been too fortunate too often. A near miss from a
whack of doubt and to celebrate I sleep in. To wake up
in my quarters, it must be flooded with light. If only
I could make sparks out of the day. Instead I meet
a friend for a drink or two. Searching for exhilaration
at a witching hour. O if I were the one doing the witching!
I’d bob in the tank when my conduct is called in question.
Even with my hands and feet bound together, I could spit
GOTCHA, FUCKERS. And rise over the dispersed crowd.
Are you a good witch or bad witch? Only a child
could approach me with a debilitating question.
When did I possess paternal instincts?
No one ever asks you to be the upstanding rebel.
I botched the role anyway and certainly got no
call backs. A council of chief marketing officers
don’t like the way I smoke. The sissy flicks
of the wrist are no way to ring in the New Masculinity.
My tricks aren’t wanted. Windsor knots have incredible
staying power. That’s why I always wanted to be
the escape artist. The one who beds an executive
and leaves before he wants to cuddle. Before
the press finds out. Before the market opens.
