Category: Uncategorized

tequila now tastes like salvation,
resting my head on bosom soft as mine,
fingers so frail yet caressing my heart like feathers on lustful flesh, visceral melody
that sends me screaming back into my ears

she’s Salvatore, I’m the worthless whore condemned
to loneliness

creation is rewritten: Eve and Eve
(or maybe Ava?)
living happily in Eden gazing at the sun’s
crescent and stars serenading the chemtrails

there’s no such thing as forbidden,
even in this garden.

the earth is just another jaundiced artwork
another piece of shit
defining love as black and white

ps: i’m rainbow across the dark sky
she’s heaven.

Listen — we’re only so much wrong
until we’re forgiven.

Listen man, I’m sorry I get high on moonshine
only to cry about ripened dandelions

or whatever, really. Gus,
I am the product of a crowded youth.

And we both know we grew up on Boys Don’t Cry
in sunny farm outhouses, shirts wet with sweat.

Tongue wet of ruff and rum and thirsty enough
to get high off dry handholds and nothing else.

We are the residues of 70s soft rock
trying to get the fuck out Germany.

& could you punch out early today
this eye nothing but a shiner —

Waiting to look into yours
& live quickly. Hastened. Minute-hand.

I think it works out in another life —
To be nothing of boys or of skin.

An offhanded comment about summer
and I’ll know it’s you. My hand under your Bauhaus tee.

is there something wrong?
your knowing eyes
lock into mine
shooting daggers
like a pointed finger

queer; queer, queer.

i tense myself
i would tell you the truth
but i’m uncertain
would you still love me
if i said i love you?

my nervousness
stuttering and stumbling
over words
it almost spills out every time
choke back the vomit

it tastes like tar
maybe something is wrong

we shouldn’t be doing this–
i shouldn’t be feeling this
your hand reaches for mine
my trembling frame
you noticed.

what pride is there to be found
in hiding behind my smile
and coughing up wilted flowers

as the moment passes i look to you
and i see a sea of stars
in the spots that dot your face
when you lean in to kiss me

i’m strangely not surprised
it travels through my body
from my lips

burning
in the right ways
for you

nothing is wrong
i am whole,
i am proud,
i am queer,
i am yours

I
I keep wandering,
Somewhere between awake and asleep
Not sure whether I’m haunted
By ghosts or by dreams.

I keep waiting
For the feelings to fade,
To move past the memories,
To stop daring to dream,
To fathom a future without you in it.

II
You wanted to meet me
In that in between place
Where our differences don’t matter–
Our definitions,
Our perspectives,
Our perceptions,
Our realities;
Where the dark doubts don’t doom
All our hopes to shoulds and should-nots.

The place where we can be–
Always together.

Where I get to kiss you each night
And bid you good morning.
Where I get to be the nook you snuggle into
To get away from the world.
Where I get to be the reason your smile
Reaches up to your eyes.
Where I get to hear all your heart has to tell me,
Followed by “I love you.”
Where I get to prove my love again and again.
Where I get to hold you close and never let go.

Where my dreams come true
Because I’m holding you.

III
From morning to night
I always come back
To this place in my mind
Where memories are all I can find.

Guided by my heart
Through time and through space
Through snippets of stories
And the moments that mattered–

An off-handed invite
For a last-second flight
To flirt with fate,
To meet your people,
To camp with wild horses,
To tease you mercilessly–
In the kayak,
In the car,
In the tent,
In the shower stall next to yours.
To the moment I asked,
Can I kiss you?

From taking your parents’ daughter away–
An 18-hour road trip,
With a paw-tistic puppy
And both of us pms-ing
To meet my family on Thanksgiving
Thankful we’d survived.

To learning the joys of cohabitating
And all of the realizations it reveals:
Melding laundry is a new level of intimacy.
There is a wrong way to fold towels.
Some people actually like dusting.
Dishwasher Tetris is an art form.

IV
The person you fell in love with,
Isn’t always the same person who moves in.

That among the books and baggage,
You also have to unpack
The expectations
The insecurities
The past
And the present

V
Yet those times are gone–
With the chance to make changes
When they might have mattered.
So I picked up the pieces
Of every mirror I’d shattered
And began to reflect
On the self that I saw:

My flaws, the furious fissures–
Fault lines that would yawn
And swallow me whole
Were actually just cracks
That allow me to contract
And e x p a n d
To breathe in again
And again…

My pock-marked personas,
That left me vulnerable
Feeling pitted and exposed.
Were in fact, a chain of chinks
That brought light
To a whole new perspective,
Of shimmer and sheen.

Your fingertips would
Find a brand-new body
One with more scars,
But more healing

One with new chapters
One that now lays open
One that knows
Where it wants to be:

Forever free
From your memory.

there’s no cowboy love here
just cowboy hurt & cowboy bile & cowboy
you’re not a real man cowboy
cowboy cowgirl you’re going to regret every
decision you’ve made so far girlboy

no sunday church like the good boys
change your mind you can be my
forever boy
forever girl
forever whatever

not worth more than a smile &
a quick peck unlike the real boys
hold my hand & turn to dust
compost your lungs just like
every other boy

dig your grave
name yourself
drown in mud
& call it home

On our backyard patio,
two white metal-frame chairs,
are lodged into a bed of pebbles.

I watch the ants follow the rusted arteries
to the top before crossing over to the other chair.

It’s funny how a pair of something
Always seemed to make better sense somehow.

Around the violets have begun to sprout.

Their long necks, slumped,
looking for the life of the familiar,
wedged, underground
before they knew

the sun
finishing its final stretch,
toddler-like it makes
itself brilliantly known at its end.

Let the evening find me
not one less second, less wise.

Let me remember the way your knuckles
fold themselves inward when you’re nervous,
the subtle flash of red that graces
the height of your cheek.

Let me remember how much it meant
to mean nothing once.

All the space you’ve left open
for others and never for me.

But tonight, there’s a greenness to the air,
tiny makers of light flicker,

little bodies floating upward,
calling out silently, as only the light can.

Time faded like yesterday’s flowers in the vase,
but our love only knows how to bloom
When you said you’d cherish me forever,
I thought you reckless
Your eagerness, disconcerting
You undressed this derelict rose of her harrowed petals
and kissed the thorns with seasoned tenderness
You rolled up your sleeves and weeded through unruly terrain
Now my heart is a garden of Elysian bliss
When the darkness threatens to steal my breath
When the moon extorts barbarous screams from my weary soul
You pull me into the cocoon of your benevolence,
blinding me with the brilliance of compassion
You sow layers of love into my pores
Now we both reap the fruits of undying passion
Let’s always stay this way
Blissfully suspended in the rapture of love
Sweet caretaker of my heart,
Never stop changing for growth becomes you
But never stop tending to this volatile garden
Never let the flowers die
Keep planting those eager kisses on my wanting forehead
and assume my thoughts
Because darling
It is so easy to see
Love becomes me because you love me

There’s a ring on my left finger,
My father questioned it when he saw it,
“The left ring finger is for marriage”,
I remember him saying.

Of course I knew that,
But since when did I care about meanings?

But as I stare,
At the ring on my left finger,
I begin to see things,
I never noticed before.

I notice the leaves are engraved,
Some deeper than others,
Some are filled in,
While others are just an outline.

I notice the love,
The love that went into picking this ring,
The love that went into creating this ring,
And the love that my partner feels for me.

It’s just a ring,
Isn’t it?

It’s a ring, on my left finger,
And I like it there,
Would I ever change it?
And what would replace it.

Perhaps a ring of gold,
With gems studded on top,
Or intricate lines carved all around,
With initials hidden inside.

What would I give in return,
If I were to receive that ring of gold?

A ring of silver, purple, and blue,
A ring with diamonds, or opals, whatever they prefer,
I’d give a ring that expressed my love,
And a ring that matched the gold of my own.
For now, my own ring is silver,
But I hope that is to change.

In a few years time,
I’ll have that moment.

The time will come,
I’m sure it will,
But for now I just stare,
At the ring on my left finger

I fall in love with a Scottish lass,
One who lives in a bonnie glen.

I feel quite happy, bodiless,
Freed from terror,
Forbidden by the world in a full circle.

I clench my grip to his,
Singing the song of auld:

“O you’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.
But me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.”

Yet all the time I had,
I loved, I loved
Until I was dead,
But my soul remains yours.

My heart is wanting
Thy dust to green.

I was alive again
To go for another round of ale with him.

The sky yields snow
For the bonnie brown lassie so braw.

Dancing, chanting, and drumming,
She runs towards her other soul.

The candle flame is flickering
As the wooden windowsill cracks.

The candle flame died as the two,
White horses danced in the snow

There the cool breeze
The clouds then
Some calness as loons
Lift on the water