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II.![]()
life round here
where the grass is green and the / kids
smoke hash and the teens get / smashed.
where the rent is high and the / people
poor and their washing machines / break.
where the cure for a headache is a / hard
on and the men inside serve / time.
where the gas goes fast and guilt / slow
we live next door to / death.
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has it become any easier to love each other?
unzip the door in torchlight
and crawl down next to me.
make a home here in the mud,
temporarily. two voices resting
together like rope. this is what
we remembered and spoke
into words for the first time:
faggot. snapping
like elastic. a boyās fists.
I need to know I exist.
a pocket of change.
my fatherās rage. honestly,
I had to. I wasnāt proud
to love you. but I loved you.
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boys like you
your father skinned your head so you wouldnāt remind him
of your mother. hair clings to carpet as if it were feathers
of a broken thing: chin down after finding out it couldnāt fly.
jaw mouthing a pride that matches the red and white flag
of baggy tracksuits they wear. tough meat is preferred here.
and this is why boys like you disappear. but you know this.
teeth meet knuckles in this place. cheek on a chain fence.
glass pebbles in the dirt. you think a smile is just a shape
the moon makes. how quickly you forget how to fidget.
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how to stage a hate crime
when he spat in my face and the others
got off the bus to beat me, I got back on.
close the door. please just close the door.
they stood there on the pavement,
laughing at me: poofter on a screen.
Iām sorry. excuse me, can I sit here?
she pulled her coat close. they all did.
turned their heads as if my face
were contagious. theyā¦ Iā¦
I closed my eyes. held myself
the whole way, like the last time.
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song of the first men
I board a bus to the city beneath
the tunnels under train-lines
pass the chapel of chapped brick
and drop down in the crypt
dig the dirt and deeper through
lose my nails until I find
solid proof that the myths were true
that the men were once alive.
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wet-plate process
I.
on the back of a Kingston bus we brush hands below a waistband
and like the rush of blood we rise on a spinning disc in the dark
and in that crease of buckled skin prying eyes cannot distinguish
the leap of dreams bucking high on a spinning disk in the dark
and in the street the suspension of a leaf above a puddle,
moon in a milk bottle as we ride on a spinning disc in the dark
but when we release our fingers tip-toe time into a fugue
and pass the man who tried to capture an image of life
on a spinning disc in the dark, as a spinning disc in the dark.
II.
if love only exists if someoneās saying itās there
then maybe thatās the point of photography,
how in the room behind an eyelid light can
find a way to develop in the dark: first as
red to a wound, then bruised iris beside it,
the yellow thirst of sleepās tongue lapping
at a tear-duct, before the heavy fall to all
four feet up in the air, until itās impossible
to tell or tear the earth from the sky.
III.
arenāt you the man who told me
horses could glide?
their hooves the thumping force
inside a human heart?
I need to believe
your words are more than just
clapped coconut
on a spinning disc...
