Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, circa 1487 (Creative Commons, Wiki images)
hushdon’t explain
i know the danger of living
everyday indignities
shifting through supernatural odds
and superhuman desire
i know loneliness
entire worlds crumbling
into crystal hours of night
i know the irony of regret
that makes you immune
to sad songs
and goodbye speeches
and hungry looks of lonely people
who just want to be loved
anyway it doesn’t matter
lonely is lonely everywhere
i live in loneliness
falling in and out of love
with men like distant planets
coiled and molten
with heartbreak and rage
needing to conquer or hold
some big dick choir boy
or thug angel
i arm myself against sunsets
and one-night stands
terrified to kiss
once in a dream
i buried a jade box
of protection symbols
verses of poems
about that heroic spring
when we first met
i left the perfect solitary blues
of who i am
and traveled the long ago
enduring creation
where black unicorns bathe
in hysterical moonlight
and kryptonite dragons graze
on lanthanum moths
O how they leave
only fragile
flicker
coaxing bombs and sunlight
from painful cocoons
like a veteran obsessed
with the salamander’s mythology
i am consumed by a melody of constellations
i will never be able to explain
indifference as contemptible
as nameless hurricanes haunting the sea
so many sorrows
i sign my reflection in
the looking glass
where youngbloods succumb
to regularly scheduled terror
and exploitation
behold an aging narcissus
at elliptical shores
overwhelmed with starfish
dying time and time again
each echo
an ecological disaster
a splintered territory
punctuated by serpent incantations
blaring television silence from radio
programmed messages
i’ve learned to dream
in defiance of tomorrow
i don’t want to love
another man hiding
at the periphery of history
or dwarf into headlines
of another Million Man March
an accident of Black liberation
or inexplicable possibility
of resilience i don’t want
to cradle another
love starved brother
until his downlow ego
barricades shame in his heart
or confusion germinating
between his thighs makes peace
with dismembered pieces of himself
desperate to escape
Mapplethorpe’s mask and spleen
touch from strangers
too horny to give a damn
i don’t want to disappear into a web of cyberspace smartphone apps
broken crescendo sexted nuptials
whispered in chat rooms and bathhouses
hungover with hurt
i want to feel
stardust in my veins
unafraid of headhunters
or their weapons of illusion
every slavish reminder abandoned
in some beautiful destruction
or lonely territory
i want the gritty laughter
of a blind owl that cries
as it pulls flesh from bone
and stares through
the ghostly projection
of trochaic absence
engraved on invincible altars
Dear Lover
when you go when you go away
please don’t come back
transatlantic winds desert storms
palms thick with guilt
loaded machine guns
aimed to split love open
til imperfect sky
erratic…merciless…
…exhilarating…sky
spews out deep green
wounds deep as forgetting mad green
envy burning endlessly
greedy green
ecstatic blood on the leaves
immortal green
twisting and turning…
irate and hopeless
hush Don’t explain