First
it is one day without you.
Then two.
And soon,
our point: moot.
And our solution, diluted.
And our class action (if ever was)
is no longer suited.
Wherewith I give to looting through
the war chest of our past
like a wily Anne Bonny
who snatches at plunder or graft.
But the wreck of that ransack,
that strongbox, our splintering coffer,
the claptrap bastard
of the best we had to offer,
is sog-soaked and clammy,
empty but for sand.
How much grit do you think you’ ve got?
Can you quit a thing that you like a lot?
You may talk of pluck; it’ s an easy word,
And where’ er you go it is often heard;
But can you tell to a jot or guess
Just how much courage you now possess?
You may stand to trouble and keep your grin,
But have you tackled self-discipline?
Have you ever issued commands to you
To quit the things that you like to do,
And then, when tempted and sorely swayed,
Those rigid orders have you obeyed?
The night we got bashed we told Rusty how
they drove up, yelled QUEER, threw a hot dog, sped off.
Rusty: Now, is that gaybashing? Or
are they just calling you queer? Good point.
Josey pitied the fools: who buys a perfectly good pack of wieners
and drives around San Francisco chucking them at gays?
And who speeds off? Missing the point, the pleasure of the bash?
Dear bashers, you should have seen the hot dog hit my neck,
Purged, with the life they left, of all
That makes life paltry and mean and small,
In their new dedication charged
With something heightened, enriched, enlarged,
That lends a light to their lusty brows
And a song to the rhythm of their trampling feet,
These are the men that have taken vows,
These are the hardy, the flower, the élite, —
These are the men that are moved no more
By the will to traffic and grasp and store
And ring with pleasure and wealth and love
The circles that self is the centre of;
Beyond the strings of water
clinging to the windowpane,
there were no cranes, just rain,
a sky blurred by wet glass,
a pond corrugated by raindrops,
and, inside, the smell of naphthalene bars,
a Victrola with a broken arm,
a spotty daguerreotype, a dusty crinoline —
O mildewed, seersucker suits
draped over vacant chairs.
I have no idea what priests
dream of on Christmas Eve, what prayer
a crippled dog might whine before the shotgun.
I have no more sense of what is sacred
than a monk might have, sweeping the temple
floor, slow gestures of honor to the left,
the right. Maybe the leaf of grass tells us
what is worthwhile. Maybe it tells us nothing.
Perhaps a sacred moment is a photograph
you look at over and over again, the one
of you and her, hands lightly clasped like you
did before prayer became necessary, the one
Last night I found my face below
the water in my cupped hands.
The mask made of copper and bone
criss-crossing to make a smirk,
a false glamour, a plated glaze.
I unwound myself from the heavy
machinery of my body's burden.
The lute, the light, chime.
I'll get up and partner myself
with music, the purple moon
peeling itself like a plum.
Men stand in a circle and
they will ask and ask again.
I want to pick the thick bud,
to lose myself in the body's posture
bending in or away, to let
Once when I was harmless
and didn’ t know any better,
a mirror to the front of me
and an ocean behind,
I lay wedged in the middle of daylight,
paper-doll thin, dreaming,
then I vanished. I gave the day a fingerprint,
then forgot.
I sat naked on a towel
on a hot June Monday.
The sun etched the inside of my eyelids,
while a boy dozed at my side.
The smell of all oceans was around us —
steamy salt, shell, and sweat,
but I reached for the distant one.
A tide rose while I slept,
I run high in my body
on the road toward sea.
I fall in love. The things
the wind is telling me.
The yellow sky quiet
in her quiet dress.
Old birds sending news
from the reddish hills.
& the one hawk flying
in the distance overhead.
That hawk is what
the wind says. In love
with the heaving
of my peacock chest,
with my lungs, two wings,
such flying things,
but mine for now, just for now
as I open my stride
above the good, dirt road,
fall in love with the mustard
Breakfast, and I’ m eating plain yogurt, figs from my garden, and honey.
I’ m sitting in a lawn chair on the backyard patio —
life is good, and the sunlight warming my lap and the pages
of a book remind me of Tucson
and the subterranean apartment I rented alone and far from home.
There was a sofa in front of my one window
where at noon the sun burned briefly on the cushions as starlings
stirred in the trees with their admonishments.
