hush	
don’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