30

i see you when you are
wound tight in darkness,
where panic twists like
snakes around your belly.
i know that place.

listen.
there are cracks there.
hairline, i know, but they're there.
if you try for them,
if you find them,
you can press your fingers in
and pull the light into being.

i am not saying "you can do anything."
i am saying " you in failure are worth as much as you in success."

i am not saying "choose happy."
i am saying only "choose." choose something.
because that is your power.

i am not saying "there is always hope."
i am saying you make the hope, beloved.
you are the hope.

29

you don't have a problem with me
 you have lots of gay friends
  you like them very much
   you're perfectly cordial

you don't have a problem with me but

BUT

  leadership positions
     you're sorry but
  leadership positions in the church
    should not
be filled
  by
ho-mo-sexuals

you don't have a problem with me
 it's just that
  i
   don't
     deserve
       your
        god
is that it?

is that it?
 well you
  don't
   deserve
    mine

my god
   who will
embrace the sons you abandon
   the daughters you shame
the neighbors you spit upon
   the world you revile

my god
  who will
    love
        even you
        even you
        even you

  you don't deserve my god
and neither do i

    that's the fucking point.

27: sad white boy intellectual americana

i fell asleep at a sufjan stevens concert
during a 25-minute ambient laser show that came
after 11 consecutive songs about his mother's death
with my knees pressed together trying not to poke
into the back of the blonde girl
in the next row sandwiched
between beards and flannel and skinny jeans
until i woke and clapped at the end
because i love you

26

Rufus Wainwright
    strong
   &
 low
sings out my car window

of men
 wanting
                 men
               being
  people

    i don't wanna smell you and lose my senses

out & loud 
 
            i sing

    i twist like a corkscrew / the sweetness risin'

         at home our
             home
      behind hotel
doors
                        against 12th floor
                   windows
                                  in rented
                                      hot tubs
   
                    i sing
        today
                         out     into the wind

strong
&
low    low   low

25

Paint the springtime
now, when it's new
in all its emerald boasting
when its shoots are tender
and its blossoms in their blush

Paint its tendrils coursing
up each limb and
through its freckled
hollows, the trills and pulses
dancing on its breath

Paint it succulent
and raucous
but no brighter than it is
so you can call it honest
when the winter comes

23

hidden
under my bed:
a dagger i keep forgetting is there
kleenex
a tub of heels i never wear
a shoebox filled with oils, bullets, silicone
and one more -
a small box with a paper coffee cup inside,
stained from its one use,
covered in true things,
handwritten honesty
and fear.

22

These are the things we say.

Love is a torrent, a force that possesses,
selfless, without shame.

Love is sacrifice, even to death,
and pure, and heavenly.

Pursue true love unturned by obstacles, by time,
for love does not accept rebuke.

Yet when Fosca loves:
insufferable.

This love, this very love,
when unrequited:

mocked, jeered, blamed.
Love disturbed, unhealthy.

One who loves so doggedly:
no sympathy for this one, and no reverence.

Yet how is she to know,
poor Fosca,

whether on her deathbed
she will win her lover's heart?

21

On Easter morning we rejoice
before we eat our god

At Easter lunch we aren't full
(our god is lean I guess)

We eat too much, we drink, we hunt
for pagan bunny eggs

At my house we read tarot cards
(I'm son of swords again)

Renewal and beginnings please
before tomorrow comes

A Monday is a Monday and
all Mondays look the same

20

so   this is
what
     time

looks   like
         
        its
   invisibility
      stripped

           by a
fishing    line
   of
numbers

  time         
    inescapable

     simple   and   round
as a   pupil

     around which
everything

     in its     last  moment

glows
   
     brighter

18: A villanelle

She thinks that this is such a lark.
Her finger lingers always on repeat;
I can't escape from Baby Shark.

GoNoodle had to make its mark
By driving parents mad into the street.
She thinks that this is such a lark.

I might be free, but then -- O hark
That damn Jaws theme song starts, the singers bleat.
I can't escape from Baby Shark.

She stares at me, her manner dark,
Hits play, and smiles, then runs on nimble feet.
She thinks that this is such a lark.

This earworm turns my future stark
Not even Moves Like Jagger can compete.
I can't escape from Baby Shark.

I move ahead without remark.
If I ignore, I may make my retreat...
She thinks that this is such a lark.
There's no escape from Baby Shark!

17

my stick bug daughter
wears camo, black earth, and joy
as her Easter dress

16

    in    the    two   o'clock  sun         

     the   baby   oak   leaves

         grow            quiet

     draped   in   spider   silk     

   their    peach    fuzz    edges
         
                 glowing

        sharp           like frost

15

I will not think about Easter today.
I will not check again for the name of the plumber who hasn't come.

I will not look at the empty flowerpots or the knee-high wildflowers.
I will watch the cats threaten one another. I will not intervene.

I will listen to the tick tick of the plastic wall clock that was my grandmother's,
but I will not be bullied by it.

I will be lulled by it instead, hypnotized as I imagine my grandmother was,
my grandmother unbothered by time,

who crafted wall art out of tinfoil and markers, doilies, magazine clippings,
who asked me again, slower ... again, slower: would I like some juice,

leaning close until I could see the gauze pressing against
the left lens of her thick glasses, the gauze that packed the crater

where her eye once was, speaking slow and loud until I finally
unveiled the question shrouded in her surgically mangled voice,

my grandmother who never let my parents pull me from her dog's crate,
who understood why I would stay there, or who didn't like to tell me no,

who showed me rather than told me things,
who stood in the doorway in her quilted flannel coat and smiled big

so I could tell that she was smiling -- she always looked like she was smiling,
her face folding in on itself, collapsed by doctors and the cancer they removed --

as I made my way up her mountain, to the Blue Bird bus hiding in the woods,
to the tree with the twin trunks -- her tree, where we would in too few years

release her ashes, the first funeral of my life, and the model for mine:
few people, little talk, many trees, and some sunshine.

13. July 1988

the summer of
leaving, of jet planes,
of tarmac baking in the drought

of american candies,
american mcdonalds,
american street signs.

the summer of boxes and floors,
new carpet, whose colors
changed in stripes beneath my hands

the summer of rabbit ears,
cartoons, and jingles
chewy chocolatey crunchy hershey

the summer of a different world
fast car, faith
the inside the beltway summer

the summer of no one,
of a hand puppet with kindly eyes
and all my thoughts in his mouth.

12

The polish on my father's shoes
looked back at me, black and bright
each night when he would slip them off,
unbuttoning his dress blue shirt,
the silver oak leaf shining on his shoulders.
I held my nose to tease him -
the smell of his big feet, his high, thin socks -
knowing he would only smile so long,
knowing when I had to quit my yowling.

At picnics, at the club, at Bunco tables
the military men and their wives
sipped Rhine wines and threw back lagers
and they laughed while I with all the other brats
ran exiled into parking lots,
or back rooms, from whose doorways
I would watch and listen
to those military men. See the way
their big hands rose and fell,
their broad and heavy shoulders back,
hear the words that I'd be spanked for saying.

Those men looked much the same, if grayer,
when my job took me to meet them
in their next careers:
I the pseudo journalist, pretty, quick,
my handshake strong,
my hand so small theirs could envelop it.
I became their darling,
these men I didn't know but did,
for whom I was demure and then
just crass enough to please them,
the men I knew to pull but never push.

When my father came up ill -
his sickness wrongly named
by a military man as stubborn as himself,
who he refused to question
as his feet went numb,  his body wasting
at the mercy of his brotherhood, his pride -
I learned then how to push, to stand steely
at attention, to command a doctor
as my father tried to raise himself
on one thin arm to glare at me for silence.

I've learned to break the protocol of military men,
to hold the eyes of the red-eyed veteran
at the bar who wears his scars like medals,
accusing us who cannot show him ours,
this military man who does not want
to charm me, or be charmed -
not by me. Shaved head. Black boots.













 

10

"what i hear,"
she says,
"is you considering everyone's feelings, trying to understand and meet everyone's desires,
except yours."

she'd never buy my bullshit, yet
i wonder what bright tale i've spun
where i don't play the vain and selfish prince.

"we've talked about this before."

she sighs, my therapist.
looks down, just for a beat.

she was behind this morning;
when she reached her desk, her hands went to her face,
she took a breath.

i asked her "how's your morning?"
i'd like to be the hero. the therapist's therapist.
she's never sighed before.

she said "this isn't my time.
this is your time."

9

If we have passion
without balance, without calm
then we have madness.

8

i curled into the railing,
his words turned into whips,
the voice i knew contorted into snarling.

i walked through the shattered glass
to my car carrying two letters.
one for now, he said, and one for later.

now he called me cunt. bitch. whore.

later, states away, he said he could not live without me.
see you on the other side.

since then i have hunted
for other bodies to make my skin sing,
for other minds to feed my fires,

and after years believing
uncontrollable
meant real

i have learned
to look for those who
can
live without me,
who, for a little while,
choose
not to.

7

Bear hugs and bacon on a hot spring Sunday,
Carly Simon singalong, champagne.
Big love, small kitchen,
No explanations needed.
A heathen feast in PJs.
Call it Sabbath.

6

i love you /
i'm in love with you:

two syllables.
a few words.

only the difference
between
a declaration
and an offering.

5

metaphors are my escape hatch

this is like this

because it's easier safer to say

we wander the minefield

for the bright reward of dandelions

than it is to just admit

that there's terrifying beauty behind human eyes

and when we choose to look at it

we cannot help but hurt.

4

The New Year's Eve I cremated that chair whose back had snapped under a stranger's weight
(when everything meant something)
I demanded that my friends all write their failures down on multicolored paper torn in strips
to throw into my fire, licking blue around the toxic dripping plastic
and the bolts that held the seat in place (sometimes).
We burned the national election page by page and beer by beer
hoping we could work some backward voodoo
and when we'd gotten properly lit up I tossed in all I had of you in one sealed envelope.

poof.

like it would cauterize it. stanch the healing and the hurt.
like grasping at my homemade superstitions would ...
i don't know
turn your head.
i still wanted to turn your head.
like burning all the evidence would stop the year from ending.
ash to ash.

3

Adoration, contrition, intercession, petition:
God, what sharp edges you have.
What an anvil
What a chain
What a rusty old filing cabinet you are.

I don't request forgiveness
for leaving your stone tablets in the rain
(you should have sealed them)
or for asking for my questions back.
Your mysteries were always your best feature.

Elsewhere on the spiral of divinity,
thank God,
you peer from human eyes
and bid me pray
not unto you but into you,

and that, that is where we start again:
the ocean and the wave.

2

the roof cascaded
tar and pinestraw, rusty nails;

the shutter clicked.

we'd found the place trespassing
just enough.
our ruin, our discovery
as though there were no brown and mouldered mattresses,
no beer cans, no grafitti.
unsafe safe place
all to us:

and there was I the lizard queen,
that yellow dress unzipped down to my waist.
chin up
-- the exit sign unhinged --
I donned the mask
and stood as you directed;

the shutter clicked.

we listened, hoping (not) to be discovered,
we laughed when the mask fell.
we framed each other through the shattered windows
once upon a time,
creating fairy tales,
in love with our own daring.

1

In the beginning
when you couldn't sleep
I brought the sea to sing to you

while I,
pulled taut by the
muted hiss and draw

and tripwire cautious of your waking,
counted the cycles of the
ocean against

your breath,
mesmerized by
the depths of moonlit blue

in the sweep of your shoulder,
gentle and lovely as
the dunes at night.