Years compressed
a blank slate the wish
instead of a history redundant,
intransigent, intolerable.
More of the same without a new outcome,
only more virulent in its expression.


Unlike most long term relationships
that fade over time, lose traction,
lose passion, lose significance.
Released unconditionally, untainted by loss.


But this thing, this thing we have created
is darker than dark, from the deepest part of the known,
broadcasts despair and channels ever living memory into
one single thought. When will it ever end?

 All is right when your crinoline circles the universe in cerulean and songbird yellow, dark eyes chiaroscuro, patented L-O-V-E. You are all that we believe no matter how long and how arduous the journey. Licks and slaps and big do(s), look-a-likes, you strong, strapping males, more tattoo than tan, tattoo over tan over ass, over the last  one. Never really over, not really. Sweet boy of 12 with that big groove-on looking like his big dyke mother. uck me! It ain’t the music or the occasion or the grief. Ain’t the Prop Million March or the visit to the cemetery in the face of a man I once loved like a soul brother. Deliver me this day from my journey that is elation, emancipation, liberation, creation in every cell of my body at once thrilled. Mind you I am, but I am not mindless. Your beauty overwhelms.

Ray Charles in my blood, bag o' rags and nights in the attic of my girlfriend's house. Just friends - the old definition. Trying to sort out
sister love and hate, father drunk always accompanied by a pail of white paint and the prospect of passing out and mom, oh what a believer. No stopping her and her sexy self. None of it quite added up but this was my chosen teenage family and when she walked through my door, the vibration stopped, the music was syncopated, the couches long and filled with possibility. She knew she could hide there. Her house was my escape. My house was her refuge.