inverse correlation

no poetry
painting
or songs
just gentle winds
and long walks
an endless caress
and just like that
no reason for art.
it is better, true,
but it is also quiet.

i killed a huge spider

(it wasn't that large)

its exoskeleton crack-popping

leg by leg

under a bleached paper towel

spider and towel will travel

to landfill,

neither heaven nor hell

(why has nobody told me

that purgatory

is a place on earth?)

painted black

sometimes
i dream that you sing
but only because
i can hear your song
even when don't.

every terrible season

it feels as if i am before you

waiting for the time we meet

enduring summer

sweat

music

drunk boys

next door,

mosquitos.

it feels the same again

i will smile
at my ghost

and you

you will arrive

on the breath of autumn

your laugh rattling the leaves

caught in the branches
where we used to love

acting years

i am a homo
i get yelled at from trucks
and flip my wrists unintentionally
let my voice sing instead of grate
and i have a pastry problem
because croissants remind me
of the game i played in france
guessing if men were gay
or just european
and of my french lover, far away
and of baking in the kitchen
while singing depressing, upbeat songs
because i'm happy, but lonely too.
i am a homo
i get scared of HIV
and i yell at people for getting too scared of HIV
and i hate other gay people for being
more sapiens than homo
because i am a homo
and i never was a good actor.
i wanted that so, so bad
bad, not badly
it was all bad, my acting years
wanting my spot at the table
trying not to cross my legs
in reality i just want to plate the food
tend the garden that made it
combine pretty colors and lovely spices
and go to bed with another homo
who yells, "damn straight!"
at the car that calls us gay.
i'm just a white homo
spending tears on a crisis
that ravaged bodies
and sometimes souls
while others stood back with disgust;
didn't matter if i was homo, queer, gay,
fag, faggot, confused
my blood is still a horror movie
and my grandparents still
are holocaust jews
and we're forgetting
that assimilation is survival
italians, homos, yids
and that somebody will be next
maybe you
and you will forget
how you raged at our pain
and then at our power
you will look back on your acting years
to see that they paid off
and nobody cares
about the cost
not even you.
give it some time.

saline

dying truck
full of love
while a dimple
that is actually a scar
sits in memory
that car is dead
its love less so
and mine
is senile
scraps of heart
carrying us feebly away

summer descends

cloudless day
sweaty morning
i find myself
a tangle of sheets
begging for
a human;
i dreamt it was you